How is multi-tasking different from increased difficulty?

Abstract

With the advancement of technologies like in-car navigation and smartphones, concerns around how cognitive functioning is influenced by "workload" are increasingly prevalent.Research shows that spreading effort across multiple tasks can impair cognitive abilities through an overuse of resources, and that similar overload effects arise in difficult single-task paradigms. We developed a novel lab-based extension of the Detection Response Task, which measures workload, and paired it with a Multiple Object Tracking Task to manipulate cognitive load. Load was manipulated either by changing within-task difficulty or by the addition of an extra task. Using quantitative cognitive modelling we showed that these manipulations cause similar cognitive impairments through diminished processing rates, but that the introduction of a second task tends to invoke more cautious response strategies that do not occur when only difficulty changes. We conclude that more prudence should be exercised when directly comparing multitasking and difficulty-based workload impairments, particularly when relying on measures of central tendency.

Integrating Ergonomics Into Safety Management: A Conceptual Risk Assessment Model for Tower Controllers at Multiple Altitudes

“…With (23), the authors obtained the adjusted human error rates, and the detailed results are in Table XIV…”

“…The attention required in the air traffic, a complex situation, can exceed the controller's available attention causing the increasing workload [22]. The increasing mental workload can decrease reaction speed [23]. The excessive mental workload can lengthen the controller's reaction time [24] to increase the operational risk.…”

“…Multi-task and increasing task demands are the sources of mental workload [23]. Although the tower controlling is a multi-task, radiotelephony communication with radio channels is the dominant information exchange route between controllers and pilots during tower controlling operations.…”

21st International Symposium on Aviation Psychology

“…From the analysis of the survey and the literature review the nexus between cognitive capacity, workload, and the indicators of a loss of SA should be explored through experimentation. Such an experiment has two main requirements: First, an experimental platform that allows to systematically change the complexity, or load, of the task (Howard et al, 2020) and second, an objective way for measuring operators' workload. The Detection Response Task (DRT) is a well established methodology for observing changes in cognitive workload and capacity, especially in the automotive industry (Strayer et al, 2006;Conti et al, 2012).…”

A model-based approach to disentangling facilitation and interference effects in conflict tasks

“…where x is the evidence, W is the Wiener process (noise from the standard normal distribution that evolves with the square root of time), and c is the diffusion coefficient, with c being fixed to 0.1 to solve a scaling property within the model. The ability to estimate these components of the decision-making process has made the diffusion model one of the most useful tools within cognitive psychology, being used to address questions in areas such as such as intelligence (van Ravenzwaaij, Brown, & Wagenmakers, 2011;Lerche et al, 2020), performance optimality (Starns & Ratcliff, 2012;Evans & Brown, 2017;Evans, Bennett, & Brown, 2019), cognitive workload (Ratcliff & Strayer, 2014;Tillman, Strayer, Eidels, & Heathcote, 2017;Howard, Evans, Innes, Brown, & Eidels, 2020), ageing (Ratcliff et al, 2001;, emotion processing (Lerche, Bucher, & Voss, 2019), alcohol consumption (van Ravenzwaaij, Dutilh, & Wagenmakers, 2012), and ego depletion (Lin, Saunders, Friese, Evans, & Inzlicht, 2020), just to name a few.…”