Epling Samantha L, Blakely Megan J, Russell Paul N, Helton William S
Department of Psychology, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, 8140, New Zealand.
Department of Psychology, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA.
Exp Brain Res. 2017 Jun;235(6):1899-1907. doi: 10.1007/s00221-017-4938-z. Epub 2017 Mar 17.
Research continues to provide evidence that people are poor multi-taskers. Cognitive resource theory is a common explanation for the inability to efficiently perform multiple tasks at the same time. This theory proposes that one's limited supply of cognitive resources can be utilized faster than it is replenished, which results in a performance decline, particularly when these limited resources must be allocated among multiple tasks. Researchers have proposed both domain-specific, for example, spatial versus verbal processing resources, and domain general cognitive resources. In the present research, we investigated whether a spatial puzzle task performed simultaneously with a verbal recall task would impair performance in either task or both tasks, compared to performance on the tasks individually. As hypothesized, a reduction in word recall was found when dual-tasking, though performance on the puzzle task did not significantly differ between the single- and dual-task conditions. This is consistent, in part, with both a general resource theory and a Multiple Resource Theory, but further work is required to better understand the cognitive processing system. The employment of the recall task in the dual-task paradigm with a variety of secondary tasks will help to continue mapping out the specificity (or lack thereof) of cognitive resources utilized in various mental and physical tasks.
研究不断提供证据表明人们不擅长同时处理多项任务。认知资源理论是对无法同时高效执行多项任务的一种常见解释。该理论提出，一个人有限的认知资源供应被利用的速度比其补充的速度要快，这会导致表现下降，尤其是当这些有限的资源必须分配到多项任务中时。研究人员既提出了特定领域的（例如，空间与语言处理资源），也提出了通用领域的认知资源。在本研究中，我们调查了与单独执行任务相比，同时进行空间拼图任务和语言回忆任务是否会损害其中一项任务或两项任务的表现。正如所假设的，在进行双重任务时发现单词回忆有所减少，尽管在拼图任务中，单任务和双任务条件下的表现没有显著差异。这在一定程度上与通用资源理论和多重资源理论都相符，但需要进一步开展工作以更好地理解认知处理系统。在双重任务范式中使用回忆任务以及各种次要任务，将有助于继续梳理出在各种心理和身体任务中所利用的认知资源的特异性（或缺乏特异性）情况。
