New perspectives on human multitasking

Poljac, Edita; Kiesel, Andrea; Koch, Iring; Müller, H.

doi:10.1007/s00426-018-0970-2

Cited by 13 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Both high-arousal sounds had similar effects on performance, regardless of valence. To avoid these issues, visual search experiments should control for the effects of arousal (see Reference [ 152 ]).…”

Section: Literature Review: Results and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Affect-Driven Attention Biases as Animal Welfare Indicators: Review and Methods

Crump

Arnott

Bethell

2018

Animals

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Simple SummaryGood animal welfare requires minimizing suffering and promoting positive experiences. To achieve this, we need reliable indicators of animals’ psychological states. In humans, different moods and emotions (“affects”) are associated with changes in visual attention (“attention bias”). We review studies investigating whether attention biases are also indicators of affect in animals. Although research is limited, evidence for affect-driven attention biases has been found in several species, especially primates and livestock. These studies are discussed in relation to tasks developed for measuring attention in humans. We identify additional findings from human psychology that might be applied to animals, particularly species not studied before, and conclude that affect-driven attention bias is a promising welfare indicator. However, it may be more useful for studying responses to specific stimuli, rather than general wellbeing. With further study, we hope these findings contribute to fulfilling society’s ethical obligations towards animals.AbstractAttention bias describes the differential allocation of attention towards one stimulus compared to others. In humans, this bias can be mediated by the observer’s affective state and is implicated in the onset and maintenance of affective disorders such as anxiety. Affect-driven attention biases (ADABs) have also been identified in a few other species. Here, we review the literature on ADABs in animals and discuss their utility as welfare indicators. Despite a limited research effort, several studies have found that negative affective states modulate attention to negative (i.e., threatening) cues. ADABs influenced by positive-valence states have also been documented in animals. We discuss methods for measuring ADAB and conclude that looking time, dot-probe, and emotional spatial cueing paradigms are particularly promising. Research is needed to test them with a wider range of species, investigate attentional scope as an indicator of affect, and explore the possible causative role of attention biases in determining animal wellbeing. Finally, we argue that ADABs might not be best-utilized as indicators of general valence, but instead to reveal specific emotions, motivations, aversions, and preferences. Paying attention to the human literature could facilitate these advances.

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Section: Literature Review: Results and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Affect-Driven Attention Biases as Animal Welfare Indicators: Review and Methods

Crump

Arnott

Bethell

2018

Animals

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“…Multitasking is an important everyday ability (for a recent overview see the editorial of a special issue by Poljac, Kiesel, Koch, & Müller, 2018) and a broad construct that can be conceptualized and assessed in various ways (e.g., Künzell et al, 2018). Burgess (2015) argues that there are at least two distinct types of multitasking, one in which two or more tasks are carried out simultaneously such as in dual task paradigms, termed “concurrent multitasking” (originally coined by Salvucci & Taatgen, 2008), and another type in which two or more tasks are carried out sequentially, termed “serial multitasking”.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

No sex difference in an everyday multitasking paradigm

Hirnstein

Larøi

Laloyaux

2018

Psychological Research

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According to popular beliefs and anecdotes, females best males when handling multiple tasks at the same time. However, there is relatively little empirical evidence as to whether there truly is a sex difference in multitasking and the few available studies yield inconsistent findings. We present data from a paradigm that was specifically designed to test multitasking abilities in an everyday scenario, the computerized meeting preparation task (CMPT), which requires participants to prepare a room for a meeting and handling various tasks and distractors in the process. Eighty-two males and 66 females with a wide age range (18-60 years) and a wide educational background completed the CMPT. Results revealed that none of the multitasking measures (accuracy, total time, total distance covered by the avatar, a prospective memory score, and a distractor management score) showed any sex differences. All effect sizes were d ≤ 0.18 and thus not even considered "small" by conventional standards. The findings are in line with other studies that found no or only small gender differences in everyday multitasking abilities. However, there is still too little data available to conclude if, and in which multitasking paradigms, gender differences arise.

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“…This view has been supported also in other studies of social affiliative behaviour. For example, a left bias for embraces related to positive emotions, a kind of adult cradling, has been reported in humans ( Packheiser et al, 2018 ) and spider monkeys ( Boeving, Belnap & Nelson, 2017 ). According to recent research, the right hemisphere involvement in social stimuli control has also been hypothesized to be a reason for the left-cradling bias reported in the maternal behaviour of humans and some great apes ( Hopkins, 2004 ; Rosa Salva et al, 2012 ; Giljov, Karenina & Malashichev, 2018 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Asymmetries in mother-infant behaviour in Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus)

Regaiolli

Spiezio

Hopkins

2018

PeerJ

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Asymmetries in the maternal behaviour and anatomy might play an important role in the development of primate manual lateralization. In particular, early life asymmetries in mother’s and infant’s behaviour have been suggested to be associated with the development of the hand preference of the offspring. The aim of this study was to investigate the presence of behavioural asymmetries in different behavioural categories of mother-infant dyads of zoo-living Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus). The study subjects were 14 Barbary macaques involved in seven mother-infant dyads housed in Parco Natura Viva, Italy. For the mothers, bouts of hand preference for maternal cradling and infant retrieval were collected. For the infants, we focused on nipple preference and hand preference for clinging on mother ventrum. Moreover, we collected bouts of hand preference for food reaching in both groups. No significant group-level bias was found for any of the behavioural categories in either mothers or infants. However, at the individual level, six out of seven mothers showed a significant cradling bias, three toward the right hand and three toward the left hand. Moreover, all infants showed a significant nipple preference, six toward the mother’s right nipple, one toward the left nipple. Furthermore, a significant correlation was found between the infant nipple preference and their hand preference for food reaching, suggesting that maternal environment rather than behaviour might affect the development of hand preference in Old World monkeys. Our findings seem partially to add to previous literature on perceptual lateralization in different species of non-primate mammals, reporting a lateral bias in mother-infant interactions. Given the incongruences between our study and previous research in great apes and humans, our results seem to suggest possible phylogenetic differences in the lateralization of mothers and infants within the Primates order.

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New perspectives on human multitasking

Cited by 13 publications

References 27 publications

Affect-Driven Attention Biases as Animal Welfare Indicators: Review and Methods

Affect-Driven Attention Biases as Animal Welfare Indicators: Review and Methods

No sex difference in an everyday multitasking paradigm

Asymmetries in mother-infant behaviour in Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus)

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