Project Details
Projekt
Time-based expectancy in multitasking: From cognitive psychology to movement science
Applicant
Professor Dr. Roland Thomaschke
Subject Area
General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
Term
from 2015 to 2023
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 274870665
The project investigates how time as a source of information supports multitasking. During the first funding period, experiments focused on the role time-based predictability in task switching scenarios, as they are common in cognitive psychology basic research on multitasking. When in task switching the duration of an empty preparatory interval predicts the type of the next task, participants behaviorally adapt to such regularity without getting aware of it. Results from the first funding period showed that this adaptation is relatively independent of the degree of predictability, and that it involves relative (e.g. short vs. long) instead of absolute (e.g. 500 ms vs. 1500 ms) representations of time. Further, adaptation to time-based predictability is also observable in other basic cognitive psychology paradigms, such as dual-tasking, or effect monitoring. However, the intense interaction between cognitive psychology and movement science in the priority program lead to preliminary experimental evidence that time-based predictability might also play a more fundamental role in multitasking. In addition to announcing which task to do next in task switching, time-based predictabilities might also assist multitasking when the predictability is embedded in one of two continuous concurrent tasks. Paradigms with continuous concurrent tasks, are predominant in the movement sciences. In collaboration with movement scientists within the priority program, a continuous concurrent multitasking paradigm has been developed, where time-based predictability is embedded in one of the tasks. A simple manual choice task (pressing on vibrating buttons) is combined, in an unsynchronized manner, with a mental arithmetic task. The duration of the short interval between two button vibrations predicts which button will vibrate next. Results from a preliminary study show that this predictability supports multitasking. Performance on the arithmetic task is better when the manual choice task is temporally predictable, relative to when it is not. The experiments proposed here will systematically investigate the mechanism underlying the effect from time-based predictability in one task on performance in a concurrent task. Hypotheses are derived from converging theorizing about predictability by multiple projects in the priority program. A first set of experiments will investigate how performance in both tasks is related to each other, and which interval durations primarily drive the effect. A second set of experiments is devoted to the domain specificity of the effects. Does time-based predictability in one task support timing related second tasks in particular? A last set of experiments will be deal with the cognitive representations of time processed in the adaptation effect. Does it involve relative representations, such as adaptation to task prediction? Or does it employ absolute representation, as typical for some related movement timing tasks?
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
