Abstract:With the constant barrage of cell phone calls, emails, instant messages, calendar reminders, and more, interruptions have become a common and consistent occurrence in our daily lives. The majority of the literature on interruptions to date has been based on controlled laboratory experiments and it is not yet completely clear how these results will translate into naturalistic settings and/or if there are certain features of interruptions and resumption that are not observable in the controlled setting. The curr… Show more
“…The duration of interruption is an important factor that influences resuming processes in terms of both speed and error generation (Altmann & Trafton, 2007). For instance, Hodgetts and Jones (2006) showed interruption duration effects in the Tower of London task but only when using interruptions as short as 3 s. However, these effects were not always confirmed (Cades, Werner, Boehm-Davis, & Arshad, 2010;Einstein, McDaniel, Williford, Pagan, & Dismukes, 2003;Gillie & Broadbent, 1989;Li et al, 2006;Monk et al, 2008). What could explain such discrepancies?…”
Section: Current Unsolved Issues About Factors Influencing Interruptionsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…It has been shown that interruptions that were similar to the primary task in terms of both modality and task schemata were more impactful than dissimilar ones (Czerwinski et al, 1991). Yet these results do not seem always replicable (Cades et al, 2010;Eyrolle & Cellier, 2000). Lu et al (2013) compiled three meta-analyses to explore the similarity effects using the modality of the tasks.…”
Section: Current Unsolved Issues About Factors Influencing Interruptionsmentioning
GeorGe a. MiChaeL Laboratoire d'étude des Mécanismes Cognitifs, université de Lyon interruptions of ongoing activities have spread since the development of and global increase in technology use and the general speeding in pace we all experience every day. their negative effects are well known: decline in performance and emotional distress. however, the literature still needs to shed light on the exact cognitive mechanisms involved in the way users decide to reply to an interruption, on the effects of interruptions of different durations, and on factors influencing reactivation of task schemata and goals at resumption. therefore, the aim of this article is to review the existing literature and models, uncover unresolved challenges, and propose new ways to confront them. we first review the substantive findings of recent decades from different domains (human-computer interaction, cognitive and experimental psychology, ergonomics), and their respective methodological and theoretical contributions. then we propose a general and operationalized definition of an interruption; review the different cognitive models of attention, executive control, and working memory that best explain the impact of interruptions; describe current challenges and questions that remain open for future studies; and finally propose an integrative research framework, the detour, which clarifies the cognitive processes at play during interruptions. we believe this work can directly affect the current state of the art, leading to new fundamental studies and applied solutions for the management of interruptions.
“…The duration of interruption is an important factor that influences resuming processes in terms of both speed and error generation (Altmann & Trafton, 2007). For instance, Hodgetts and Jones (2006) showed interruption duration effects in the Tower of London task but only when using interruptions as short as 3 s. However, these effects were not always confirmed (Cades, Werner, Boehm-Davis, & Arshad, 2010;Einstein, McDaniel, Williford, Pagan, & Dismukes, 2003;Gillie & Broadbent, 1989;Li et al, 2006;Monk et al, 2008). What could explain such discrepancies?…”
Section: Current Unsolved Issues About Factors Influencing Interruptionsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…It has been shown that interruptions that were similar to the primary task in terms of both modality and task schemata were more impactful than dissimilar ones (Czerwinski et al, 1991). Yet these results do not seem always replicable (Cades et al, 2010;Eyrolle & Cellier, 2000). Lu et al (2013) compiled three meta-analyses to explore the similarity effects using the modality of the tasks.…”
Section: Current Unsolved Issues About Factors Influencing Interruptionsmentioning
GeorGe a. MiChaeL Laboratoire d'étude des Mécanismes Cognitifs, université de Lyon interruptions of ongoing activities have spread since the development of and global increase in technology use and the general speeding in pace we all experience every day. their negative effects are well known: decline in performance and emotional distress. however, the literature still needs to shed light on the exact cognitive mechanisms involved in the way users decide to reply to an interruption, on the effects of interruptions of different durations, and on factors influencing reactivation of task schemata and goals at resumption. therefore, the aim of this article is to review the existing literature and models, uncover unresolved challenges, and propose new ways to confront them. we first review the substantive findings of recent decades from different domains (human-computer interaction, cognitive and experimental psychology, ergonomics), and their respective methodological and theoretical contributions. then we propose a general and operationalized definition of an interruption; review the different cognitive models of attention, executive control, and working memory that best explain the impact of interruptions; describe current challenges and questions that remain open for future studies; and finally propose an integrative research framework, the detour, which clarifies the cognitive processes at play during interruptions. we believe this work can directly affect the current state of the art, leading to new fundamental studies and applied solutions for the management of interruptions.
“…Interruptions to our ongoing mental activities are omnipresent in modern life—whether from cell phones, emails, navigation devices, alarms, etc. An observational study found that people are interrupted an average of 12 times per hour at work in our increasingly digital world (Cades et al, 2010 ), with such interruptions often leading to errors. Another study of nurses from two hospitals showed that interruptions increased both procedural (e.g., fail to check patient identification) and clinical judgment errors (e.g., give the wrong drug or wrong dose), with potentially life threatening consequences (Westbrook et al, 2010 ).…”
Interruptions to ongoing mental activities are omnipresent in our modern digital world, but the brain networks involved in interrupted performance are not known, nor have the activation of those networks been modulated. Errors following interruptions reflect failures in spatial memory, whose maintenance is supported by a brain network including the right posterior parietal cortex (PPC). The present study therefore used bi-directional transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) of right PPC to examine the neuromodulation of spatial errors following interruptions, as well as performance on another PPC-dependent task, mental rotation. Anodal stimulation significantly reduced the number of interruption-based errors and increased mental rotation accuracy whereas cathodal stimulation significantly increased errors and reduced mental rotation accuracy. The results provide evidence for a causal role of the PPC in the maintenance of spatial representations during interrupted task performance.
“…As the number of technological devices that people interact with on a daily basis has increased-cell phones, laptops, navigation devices, etc.-so has the incidence of interruptions to ongoing work activities. Recent data has put the frequency of interruptions to as much as 12 times per hour in the workplace (Cades, Werner, Boehm-Davis, & Arshad, 2010), with an estimated productivity cost to companies in the United States of $588 billion per year (Spira & Feintuch, 2005).…”
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.