Strategic Adaptation to Task Characteristics, Incentives, and Individual Differences in Dual-Tasking.

ABSTRACT: We investigate how good people are at multitasking by comparing behavior to a prediction of the optimal strategy for dividing attention between two concurrent tasks. In our experiment, 24 participants had to interleave entering digits on a keyboard with controlling a randomly moving cursor with a joystick. The difficulty of the tracking task was systematically varied as a within-subjects factor. Participants were also exposed to different explicit reward functions that varied the relative importance of the tracking task relative to the typing task (between-subjects). Results demonstrate that these changes in task characteristics and monetary incentives, together with individual differences in typing ability, influenced how participants choose to interleave tasks. This change in strategy th

SUBMITTER: Janssen CP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4498911 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature