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The Effect of Interruption Duration and Demand on Resuming Suspended Goals
"... The time to resume task goals after an interruption varied depending on the duration and cognitive demand of interruptions, as predicted by the memory for goals model (Altmann & Trafton, 2002). Three experiments using an interleaved tasks interruption paradigm showed that longer and more demand ..."
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Cited by 26 (3 self)
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The time to resume task goals after an interruption varied depending on the duration and cognitive demand of interruptions, as predicted by the memory for goals model (Altmann & Trafton, 2002). Three experiments using an interleaved tasks interruption paradigm showed that longer and more demanding interruptions led to longer resumption times in a hierarchical, interactive task. The resumption time profile for durations up to one minute supported the role of decay in defining resumption costs, and the interaction between duration and demand supported the importance of goal rehearsal in mitigating decay. These findings supported the memory for goals model, and had practical implications for context where tasks are frequently interleaved such as office settings, driving, emergency rooms, and aircraft cockpits.
Resumption Strategies for Interrupted Programming Tasks
"... Interruptions are a daily reality for professional programmers. Unfortunately, the strategies programmers use to recover lost knowledge and resume work have not yet been well studied. In this paper, we perform exploratory analysis on 10,000 recorded programming sessions of 85 programmers to understa ..."
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Cited by 8 (2 self)
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Interruptions are a daily reality for professional programmers. Unfortunately, the strategies programmers use to recover lost knowledge and resume work have not yet been well studied. In this paper, we perform exploratory analysis on 10,000 recorded programming sessions of 85 programmers to understand the variety of strategies used by programmers for resuming programming tasks. In our study, we find that only 10 % of the programming sessions have coding activity start in less than a minute, only 7 % of the programming sessions involve no navigation to other locations prior to editing, and find evidence of programmers seeking other sources of task context during task resumption. Based on the analysis, we suggest how task resumption might be better supported in future development tools. 1.
Mitigating disruptions: can resuming an interrupted task be trained
- Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 50th Annual Meeting
, 2006
"... Research has shown that with practice people improve on most tasks. It has also been made clear that over time interruptions become less disruptive. It is unclear whether the reduction in interruption disruptiveness is due to a general practice effect or specific to the interruption/resumption proce ..."
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Cited by 5 (2 self)
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Research has shown that with practice people improve on most tasks. It has also been made clear that over time interruptions become less disruptive. It is unclear whether the reduction in interruption disruptiveness is due to a general practice effect or specific to the interruption/resumption process. In this experiment, participants performed three sessions of a task with one, two, or three of the sessions containing interruptions. We found that in addition to all participants showing primary task improvement, those with more exposure to interruptions also showed improvement in dealing with the interruptions. Specifically, participants with practice on only the primary task did not show improvement with the interruptions. These results suggest that the mitigations of the disruptions are directly related to people getting better at handling the interruptions.
Improving memory after interruption: Exploiting soft constraints and manipulating information access cost
- Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied
, 2009
"... Forgetting what one was doing prior to interruption is an everyday problem. The recent soft constraints hypothesis (Gray, Sims, Fu, & Schoelles, 2006) emphasizes the strategic adaptation of information processing strategy to the task environment. It predicts that increasing information access c ..."
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Cited by 4 (1 self)
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Forgetting what one was doing prior to interruption is an everyday problem. The recent soft constraints hypothesis (Gray, Sims, Fu, & Schoelles, 2006) emphasizes the strategic adaptation of information processing strategy to the task environment. It predicts that increasing information access cost (IAC: the time, and physical and mental effort involved in accessing information) encourages a more memoryintensive strategy. Like interruptions, access costs are also intrinsic to most work environments, such as when opening documents and e-mails. Three experiments investigated whether increasing IAC during a simple copying task can be an effective method for reducing forgetting following interruption. IAC was designated Low (all information permanently visible), Medium (a mouse movement to uncover target information), or High (an additional few seconds to uncover such information). Experiment 1 found that recall improved across all three levels of IAC. Subsequent experiments found that High IAC facilitated resumption after interruption, particularly when interruption occurred on half of all trials (Experiment 2), and improved prospective memory following two different interrupting tasks, even when one involved the disruptive effect of using the same type of resource as the primary task (Experiment 3). The improvement of memory after interruption with increased IAC supports the prediction of the soft constraints hypothesis. The main disadvantage of a high access cost was a reduction in speed of task completion. The practicality of manipulating IAC as a design method for inducing a memory-intensive strategy to protect against forgetting is discussed.
Dealing with Interruptions can be Complex, but does Interruption Complexity Matter: a Mental Resources Approach to Quantifying Disruptions
"... Past work examining the effects of interruption complexity on primary task performance has yielded quite mixed results. Some research suggests that more complex interruptions lead to greater disruption of the primary task, while other studies have shown that interruption complexity does not directly ..."
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Past work examining the effects of interruption complexity on primary task performance has yielded quite mixed results. Some research suggests that more complex interruptions lead to greater disruption of the primary task, while other studies have shown that interruption complexity does not directly influence the amount of primary task disruption. It is our hypothesis that interruption complexity, defined by the number of mental operators required to complete a task as opposed to an intuitive sense of difficulty, does affect primary task performance, such that interruptions requiring more mental operators (more complex) lead to greater disruption than do less complex interruptions. Participants performed a single primary task in conjunction with either a simple or complex interruption. The complex interruption required more mental operators to complete than the simple interruption. Our results showed that it took longer to resume the primary task following a complex interruption than it did following a simple interruption. These results suggest that more complex interruptions, as quantified by the number of mental operations required, do indeed lead to greater primary task disruption.
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, 2011
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Difficulty of Interruptions 1 Does the Difficulty of an Interruption Affect our Ability to Resume?
"... Research has shown that different types of interruptions can affect their disruptiveness. However, it is unclear how different features of the interrupting task determine its disruptive effects. Specifically, some theories predict that the difficulty of an interruption does not contribute to the dis ..."
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Research has shown that different types of interruptions can affect their disruptiveness. However, it is unclear how different features of the interrupting task determine its disruptive effects. Specifically, some theories predict that the difficulty of an interruption does not contribute to the disruptive effects of that interruption alone. Disruptive effects can be mediated by the extent to which the interrupting task interferes with the ability to rehearse during the interruption. In this experiment participants performed a single primary task with three interruptions of different difficulty. We found that interruptions were more disruptive when the task minimized the participant’s ability to rehearse (as measured by the number of mental operators required to perform the task) and not just when they were more difficult. These results suggest that the ability to rehearse during an interruption is critical in facilitating resumption of a primary task.
Applying Market Mechanisms to Facilitate Interpersonal Information Exchange
, 2010
"... question and answer (Q&A), market mechanisms, incentives, motivation, social relationship theory, information overload, spam, interruption, human attention. Requesting and sharing information through computer-mediated technology is an integral part of our lives in this information age. However, ..."
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question and answer (Q&A), market mechanisms, incentives, motivation, social relationship theory, information overload, spam, interruption, human attention. Requesting and sharing information through computer-mediated technology is an integral part of our lives in this information age. However, when deciding whether or not and how to engage in information exchanges, parties involved often have different needs and constraints. In addition, they are often unaware of each others ’ needs and constraints. Such asymmetry in motivation and information leads to suboptimal allocation of attention and time and contributes to the growing problems of information overload, costly interruptions and missed opportunities. A potential solution is to employ market mechanisms to support information exchange. Markets are institutions that allow individuals to trade goods and services efficiently. Applying markets to information exchange, askers can use pricing to signal the importance of the information exchange and compensate the answerers for their time. Answerers can use pricing mechanisms to filter incoming requests, reducing interruption costs and information overload. This dissertation studies the strengths and weaknesses of using economic markets for interpersonal information exchange. Are there costs in incorporating markets into our everyday information exchanges?
Enhancing Technology-Mediated Communication: Tools, Analyses, and Predictive Models
, 2007
"... findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the funding agencies. Keywords: Interpersonal communication, technology-mediated communication, computer-supported cooperative work, CSCW, computer-mediated communicat ..."
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findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the funding agencies. Keywords: Interpersonal communication, technology-mediated communication, computer-supported cooperative work, CSCW, computer-mediated communication, CMC, interruption, responsiveness, availability, interpersonal relationships, predictive statistical models, task-switching. For most of us, interpersonal communication is at the center of our professional and personal lives. With the growing distribution of business organizations and of our social networks, so grows the need for and use of communication technologies. Many of today’s communication tools, however, suffer from a number of shortcomings. For example, the inherent discrepancy between one’s desire to initiate communication and another’s ability or desire to receive it, often leads to unwanted interruptions on the one hand, or failed communication on the other. I have taken an interdisciplinary approach to address these shortcomings, and also in order to provide a better understanding of human behavior and the use of communication tools, combining tool-building and the creation of predictive models, with
