Do not interrupt me if it makes me feel something – Study of the effect of the pleasantness of interruptions on performance

Interruption in visual search: a systematic review

“…Most studies carried out in natural environments (6/10) allowed for search resumption, however this was always dependent on the completion of a task during the interruption ( Williams and Drew, 2017 ; Drew et al, 2018 ; Wynn et al, 2018 ; Brazzolotto and Michael, 2020 , 2021 ; Radović et al, 2022 ). In natural scenarios where the interruption ended the search, participants were required to complete a task in two studies ( Rice and Trafimow, 2012 ; Nachtnebel et al, 2023 ) while in one study, they were not required to perform any task post-interruption ( Rieger et al, 2021 ).…”

“…When we assessed whether the interruption event was considered a task or not, we observed that 14 studies did not involve a task as the interruption ( Olds et al, 2000a , 2000b , 2000c , 2001 ; Olds and Punambolam, 2002 ; Lleras et al, 2005 , 2007 ; Van Zoest et al, 2007 ; Jungé et al, 2009 ; Lleras and Enns, 2009 ; Thomas and Lleras, 2009 ; Godwin et al, 2013 ; Mereu et al, 2014 ; Rieger et al, 2021 ); and all but one of these studies ( Rieger et al, 2021 ) were conducted in artificial environments. In contrast, in the 13 studies where the interruption was a task, five were conducted in artificial environments ( Beck et al, 2006 ; Ratwani and Trafton, 2008 ; Höfler et al, 2011 ; Alonso et al, 2021 ; Labonté and Vachon, 2021 ) and eight in natural ones ( Rice and Trafimow, 2012 ; Williams and Drew, 2017 ; Drew et al, 2018 ; Wynn et al, 2018 ; Brazzolotto and Michael, 2020 , 2021 ; Radović et al, 2022 ; Nachtnebel et al, 2023 ). Within these 13 studies, two involved interrupting event tasks that were directly related to the interrupted search, requiring participants to use information obtained during the incomplete search to complete their tasks ( Beck et al, 2006 ; Rice and Trafimow, 2012 ) whereas the tasks in the remaining nine studies were search-unrelated.…”

“…Longer ( Labonté and Vachon, 2021 ) and more difficult ( Brazzolotto and Michael, 2020 ) interruptions significantly delayed the resumption time compared to shorter or simpler ones. Similarly, interruptions involving emotionally charged stimuli extended resumption time more than neutral interruptions ( Brazzolotto and Michael, 2021 ). Additionally, spatial interruptions caused greater resumption lag than non-spatial ones ( Ratwani and Trafton, 2008 ).…”

“…Instead, research is spread across various disciplines, each contextualized within its broader domain. For instance, this topic has been explored in the fields of human-machine interaction ( Brazzolotto and Michael, 2021 ), medical imaging ( Drew et al, 2018 ), airport security ( Rieger et al, 2021 ), and basic research in cognitive psychology ( Lleras et al, 2005 ). Despite this fragmented landscape, to the best of our knowledge, no current studies aim to consolidate the scattered insights on the impact of interruptions in visual search.…”

The impact of different distractions on outdoor visual search and object memory

“…Interruptions during search seem to increase search times (e.g. 8 , 30 , 31 ), although participants can quite well resume search after a brief interruption 32 . The complete abortion of a search (i.e., when the interruption occurs with no possibility to continue searching afterwards) often goes along with time pressure tasks.…”