Cognitive Psychology Lecture Notes- Multitasking PDF

# Cognitive Psychology Lecture Three - Psychology of Multitasking ## Multitasking - Performing two or more tasks during the same period of time ## Learning Objectives - Understand: - Divided attention - Empirical work on: - Mobile phones and driving - Mobile phones and wa...

# Cognitive Psychology Lecture Three - Psychology of Multitasking ## Multitasking - Performing two or more tasks during the same period of time ## Learning Objectives - Understand: - Divided attention - Empirical work on: - Mobile phones and driving - Mobile phones and walking - Task switching - Multimedia multitasking - Is multitasking really beneficial? - Supertaskers ## What is Divided Attention? - The ability to respond, seemingly simultaneously, to multiple tasks or demands - This is impacted by a number of factors about the tasks involved: - Practice - Task difficulty - Task similarity ## Practice - Schneider and Shiffrin (1977) demonstrated the impact of practice - Presented target stimulus in memory set - Participants were shown a target stimulus - Followed by a series of 20 test frames shown very rapidly - This task required carrying out two tasks: - Retaining target in memory - Attending to distractor stimuli and comparing to memory set - Was the target from the memory set present in a test frame? - Initially, performance was around 55% correct, rising to 90% at around 900 trials - After 600 trials participants reported a sense of automaticity ## Task Difficulty - Later experiments showed that if both the target and the distractors were letters and if targets on some trials were distractors on others, no automaticity was shown ## Task Similarity - McCleod (1977) demonstrated the impact of task modality - Participants had to identify tones by pointing at labels or identifying them verbally - At the same time, they had to follow a contour of a line - requiring visual and manual resources (one hand for contour, one for pointing) - There were more errors in the contour task when the tone tasks required pointing - The similar nature of the tasks are what makes them hard to do concurrently ## Divided Attention - So, can we perform more than one task at the same time? - Yes, but usually at a cost - Breakdown of performance ## Mobile Phones and Driving - Strayer and Johnson (2001) - Participants required to press brakes in response to a red light - Results showed that those using a mobile phone were slower to respond and missed more red lights - Those with no cell phones missed a fraction of 0.3 red lights while those with cell phones missed a fraction of 0.7 - Those with no cell phones had a reaction time of roughly 525 milliseconds whilst those with cell phones had a reaction time of 575 milliseconds - This was regardless of whether the phone was hands-free or not - So, it is not driving with one hand - it is that using a phone uses cognitive resources that would normally be used for driving ## Mobile Phones and Driving - Redelmeier and Tibshirani (1997) - Examined mobile phone call records of 699 drivers involved in collisions - Using a mobile phone was associated with a quadrupling of the risk of a collision (4.3 times more likely) - Using hands-free phones was no safer than using handheld phone - The relative risk was similar for drivers who differed in characteristics like age and driving experience ## Mobile Phones and Driving - Caird et al. (2008) - Meta-analysis with a total sample size of approximately 2000 participants - Reaction times to events (e.g. onset of brake lights on the car in the front) increased by 250ms when participants used phones - This increase in reaction time was observed across different test settings - laboratory, driving simulation, and on-road research setting - The effect was larger when drivers were talking than when they were listening. - If you think 1/4 of a second is too short a time period to be significant, consider this: at 50mph (8okph) it translates to travelling an extra 18 feet (5.5m) - enough to make a difference ## Caird et al. (2014) Meta-analysis of studies on texting and driving (n=977) - Typing and reading text messages adversely affected eye movements, stimulus detection, reaction time, collisions, lane positioning, speed, and headway - Smaller decrements for reading alone compared to typing and typing and reading - Dingus et al. (2016) reported an increase in the prevalence of texting while driving - Atwood et al. (2018) reported similar findings, with those who text more at an increased risk of crashing - Monk et al. (2023) reported positive benefits for voice operated systems for 'phone functions' ## Driving and Phone Use - Strayer et al. (2003) - Cell-Phone Study - **Results** - Group 1 - drive in a simulator and brake unexpectedly - Group 2 - drive and talk on hands-free phone at the same time and brake unexpectedly - During low-traffic conditions, Group 2 took slightly longer to press brake - During high-traffic conditions, Group 2 took much longer to press brake - Pouyakian et al. (2023) reported ongoing effects after conversations have ended ## Automated Driving Systems - Wandtner et al. (2018) - Investigated response times to critical tasks when driving in highly automated systems and performing non-driving related tasks - Response times were quickest in control conditions and with an auditory-vocal task - Response times were longer when the non-driving related task was visual-vocal and longer still when visual-manual (this is like reading and writing text messages) - Thus, even with highly automated systems there must be careful consideration of the tasks in which drivers should engage while 'driving' ## But what about talking to passengers? - Drews, Pasupathi, and Stayer (2008) - A conversation with someone who is present is different than talking on the phone - Surrounding traffic becomes a topic of the conversation, driver and passenger show situational awareness - The driving conditions have a direct influence on the complexity of the conversation, reducing the potential negative effects of a conversation on driving - A passenger who is too “supportive” by constantly commenting and directing attention in an "over-controlling" fashion has a potentially negative impact on performance - Mehrotra et al. (2023) reported changes in gaze behaviour in young drivers in the presence of passengers ## The unicycling clown - Hyman et al. (2010) - not just driving but walking - Phone users walked more slowly, changed directions more frequently, and were less likely to acknowledge other people - They were also less likely to notice an unusual activity along their walking route - Conclusion - mobile phone usage may cause inattentional blindness even during a simple activity that should require few cognitive resources ## Task Switching - Task switching - ability to shift attention between one task and another - Very useful in our unpredictable and complex world but it comes at a cost - Switching cost - slower performance and decrease in accuracy after the switch - "Although switch costs may be relatively small, sometimes just a few tenths of a second per switch, they can add up to large amounts when people switch repeatedly back and forth between tasks. Thus, multitasking may seem efficient on the surface but may actually take more time in the end and involve more error. Meyer has said that even brief mental blocks created by shifting between tasks can cost as much as 40 percent of someone's productive time" - APA (2006) ## Some people are more attracted to multitasking - Approach-oriented or reward focused - You consider the possible benefits to multitasking and are attracted to the higher potential rewards it represents - High sensation seeker - You need constant stimulation and enjoy the novelty of switching to new tasks - Convinced you are good at it - Those who think they're good at multitasking are more likely to engage in the behaviour more often than those who think they're just average at it - Have trouble focusing - If you're prone to distraction or have trouble blocking out external stimuli, multitasking may be harder for you to shake ## Multimedia Multitasking - why should we care? - OFCOM report from 2021 showed an increase in online activity with several hours per day spent online or consuming media in some form or other - A significant amount of the media activity is spent using more than one form of media at the same time - Among 13-17-year-olds, 49% claimed to be using their phone while watching television ## Ophir et al. (2009) - Used a questionnaire to identify people who engaged in high or low levels of multitasking - These two groups were then compared along established cognitive control dimensions. - Cognitive control involves a group of processes that allow behaviour to vary adaptively depending on current goals, rather than remaining rigid and inflexible - Heavy media multitaskers more susceptible to interference from irrelevant representations in memory - Surprising result - heavy media multitaskers performed worse on a test or task-switching ability, often regarded as the “essence of multitasking" - This is likely due to reduced ability to filter out interference from the irrelevant task set - However, more recently, a replication and meta-analysis failed to find support for the original study (Wiradhany and Nieuwenstein, 2017) ## Loh and Kanai (2014) - Used fMRI to look at the brain structures of 75 adults - Independent of individual personality traits, multi-media multitaskers had smaller grey matter density in anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), responsible for cognitive and emotional control functions - Note that this study reveals a link rather than causality - A long-term study would be needed to understand whether high concurrent media usage leads to changes in the brain structure, or whether those with less-dense grey matter are more attracted to media multitasking - Loh et al (2021) reported lower executive function in high multi-media multitasker users ## The iPhone effect- Misra et al. (2016) - Examined the relationship between the presence of mobile devices and the quality of real-life in-person social interactions in a naturalistic field experiment - **Methodology** - 200 participants (100 dyads) took part in the study - They were asked to spend 10 minutes talking about a casual topic such as “their thoughts and feelings about plastic holiday trees” or a meaningful topic such as “the most meaningful events of the past year" - Researcher did not listen or tape their conversation, they just observed behaviour from a distance - After 10 minutes, participants were asked to fill out a brief survey - **What was measured?** - **Independent variables** - The presence of a mobile phone during the conversation - Type of conversation (casual or meaningful) - Partner closeness - **Dependent variables** - Feelings of interpersonal connectedness during the conversation - Empathic Concern Scale measuring perceived effort to understand one's thoughts and feelings - **Results** - About one third (29) of dyads involved mobile phone use - The quality of the conversation in the presence of mobile devices was rated as less fulfilling - The participants who conversed in the presence of mobile communication devices reported experiencing lower empathetic concern - This effect was stronger in closer relationships - This pattern of results was the same for two types of conversation ## Supertaskers - Watson and Strayer (2010) - **Results** - Attentional control and goal maintenance play significant roles in multitasking - The OSPAN task involves maintaining the task goal of memorising items and recalling them in the correct serial order, while concurrently performing distracting math problems - To identify individuals with extraordinary multitasking ability, they used a high-fidelity driving simulator to pair the task of driving with an auditory version of the OSPAN task - They tested 200 undergraduates - All had normal or corrected-to-normal vision and a valid driver's license - At the group level dual-task performance was inferior to single-task performance for: - Brake reaction time - Following distance - Memory performance - OSPAN maths performance - This pattern of performance is consistent with the well-established pattern of dual-task performance decrements associated with limited-capacity attention - Interference was bidirectional with both driving and OSPAN measures suffering in dual-task conditions - 97.5% of participants multitasked with a decrease - 2.5% of participants multitasked without a decrease - So, supertaskers may exist but they are rare, and most people are not supertaskers - Unfortunately, many people have the belief that the laws of attention do not apply to them (e.g., they have seen other drivers who are impaired while multitasking, but think that they themselves are the exception to the rule) ## The perils of multitasking - 2% of people can multitask effectively, show studies- for the remaining 98% multitasking can do more harm than good - Technology is encouraging more and more fruitless multitasking - 89% of people with smart phones use them at work - Even though 45% of US workers already believe they have to work on too many things at once - On an average, employees who use a computer for work are distracted once every 10.5 minutes - Students multitask while they learn - 62% of web pages students open on their laptops during class are unrelated to the subject - On average, they generate 65 new screen windows per lecture - Smartphones make it hard not to multitask, when it comes to checking email or internet via smartphones 67% will do so on a date, 45% will do so at the movie theatre, and 33% will do so in religious spaces - Even when people are relaxing the urge to multitask takes over - While the average American watches TV 42% browse the internet, 29% talk on their phones, and 26% text or IM - You may feel like you are accomplishing more, but really trying to focus on more than one thing causes a 40% drop in productivity. - Lower IQ- studies show that while working being distracted by incoming calls or emails lowers a person's IQ by 10 points- this is the equivalent of missing a night of sleep and twice the effect of marihuana - An average desk job employee loses 2.1 hours a day to interruptions or distractions meaning 546 hours is the annual loss to distraction. - Students who do homework while IMing or texting are more likely to report academic impairment ## Summary - You should be able to: - Define divided attention - Identify what makes some tasks able to be performed together successfully - Understand application of this to real world settings - Driving - Multimedia use - Using cell phones, hand-held or hands-free, delays a driver's reactions as much as having a blood alcohol content of 0.08%