Department of Psychology.
University of California, Merced.
J Exp Psychol Appl. 2022 Jun;28(2):262-282. doi: 10.1037/xap0000388. Epub 2022 Jan 6.
We examined the hidden costs of intermittent multitasking. Participants performed a pursuit-tracking task (Experiment 1) or drove in a high-fidelity driving simulator (Experiment 2) by itself or while concurrently performing an easy or difficult backwards counting task that periodically started and stopped, creating on-task and off-task multitasking epochs. A novel application of the Detection Response Task (DRT), a standardized protocol for measuring cognitive workload (ISO 17488, 2016), was used to measure performance in the on-task and off-task intervals. We found striking costs that persisted well after the counting task had stopped. In fact, the multitasking costs dissipated as a negatively accelerated function of time with the largest costs observed immediately after multitasking ceased. Performance in the off-task interval remained above baseline levels throughout the 30-s off-task interval. We suggest that loading new procedures into working memory occurs fairly quickly, whereas purging this information from working memory takes considerably longer. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
我们考察了间歇性多重任务的隐藏代价。参与者单独或同时执行追踪任务（实验 1）或在高保真驾驶模拟器中执行任务（实验 2），同时执行一个简单或困难的倒计数任务，该任务周期性地开始和停止，从而产生任务内和任务外多重任务周期。我们使用检测响应任务（DRT）的新应用，这是一种用于测量认知工作量的标准化协议（ISO 17488，2016），来测量任务内和任务外间隔的表现。我们发现了显著的代价，这些代价在计数任务停止后很长一段时间内仍然存在。事实上，多重任务的代价随着时间的推移呈负加速函数消散，最大的代价是在多重任务停止后立即出现的。在 30 秒的无任务间隔内，无任务间隔的表现一直高于基线水平。我们认为，将新程序加载到工作记忆中相当快，而从工作记忆中清除这些信息则需要相当长的时间。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2022 APA，保留所有权利）。
