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Interruptions are a common feature of the modern task environment leading to a loss of accuracy and efficiency. The project examines two facets of interruption – pre-interruption factors and the character of the interruption – in order to determine those features that may exacerbate or ameliorate the disruption. We use as a primary task the 5-disc Tower of London (ToL) problem and focus on the execution phase: What factors affect retrieval of the next move in a planned sequence, when execution of this sequence is unexpectedly broken?

Theme 1 examines in detail the ‘interruption lag’, the critical time between warning of an interruption and the onset of the new task (Altmann & Trafton, 2002). We propose that the cost of interruption may be reduced if it is possible to consolidate task goals before they are suspended.

Theme 2 investigates factors associated with the character of the interruption, for example whether an interruption more similar to the primary task increases the degree of disruption. In addition to performance data, eye-tracking data will be collected in order to monitor the areas that participants are processing during goal suspension and resumption as this may reveal participant selected strategies under different conditions.

Award/Grant Outputs and Documents
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