Strategic Control of Time-Sharing Performance

分时绩效的战略控制分时或在多项任务之间分散注意力是许多活动的重要组成部分，如驾驶和驾驶。但分时绩效往往被观察到从单任务绩效水平开始下降。更好地理解分时的能力和局限性，与理解注意力的本质是密切相关的。它对于设计和评估许多日常活动和许多职业任务也是最有用的，例如在驾驶舱内导航时保持飞机稳定性。例如，研究发现，无论是否涉及手部手术，使用移动电话时发生机动车碰撞的风险是不使用移动电话时的四倍。这牵涉到偏心受限。这项研究旨在更好地理解分时的战略控制。对于分时限制的本质，我们考察了两种主要的理论观点。瓶颈理论假设注意力是信息处理系统的瓶颈，需要按顺序处理多个任务。资源理论假设在分时任务之间分配的注意力是有限的，这样当一个任务的性能因优先级的提高而提高时，另一个任务的性能可能会下降。传统上，心理不应期(PRP)范式被用来检验瓶颈理论，而相对优先操纵被用来检验资源理论。这项拟议的研究将检验从这些测试得出的不同结论在多大程度上受到所用方法的限制。来自两种范式结合的证据应该会导致对注意的性质及其对表现的影响的更深入的理解。结果应该会增加一个已经相当丰富的双重任务数据库。拟议的汇聚操作和方法改进应该为进一步理解注意机制提供一个新的和强大的舞台。这一理解对日常活动有着深远的影响，比如开车时打电话回家，或者在恶劣天气下降落一架挤满人的波音747飞机。

Strategic Control of Time-Sharing PerformanceTime-sharing or dividing attention among multiple tasks is animportant component of many activities such as driving andpiloting. But time-sharing performance is often observed todegrade from single-task performance level. A betterunderstanding of the capability and limitations of time-sharingis germane to the understanding of the nature of attention. Itis also most useful for designing and evaluating many dailyactivities and many occupational tasks such as maintainingaircraft stability while navigating in the cockpit. For example,the risk of motor vehicle collision was found to be four timeshigher when using a cellular telephone than when not regardlessof whether hand operations were involved. This implicated acentral limitation. The proposed research aims at a betterunderstanding of the strategic control of time-sharing.Two major theoretical views on the nature of the limitations oftime-sharing are examined. Bottleneck theory hypothesizes thatattention acts as a bottleneck along the information processingsystem, necessitating multiple tasks to be processedsequentially. Resource theory hypothesizes a finite amount ofattention that is allocated among the time-shared tasks such thatwhen performance of one task improves due to increased priority,the other is likely to degrade. Traditionally, the psychologicalrefractory period (PRP) paradigm has been used almost exclusivelyto test bottleneck theory and the relative-priority manipulationhas been used to test resource theory. The proposed researchwill examine the extent to which the divergent conclusions drawnfrom these tests are constrained by the methodologies used.Converging evidence from a combination of the two paradigmsshould lead to a deeper understanding of the nature of attentionand its effects on performance. The results should add to analready rather rich dual-task database. The proposed convergingoperations and methodological refinements should provide a newand powerful arena for further understanding of the attentionalmechanism. This understanding has profound implications onactivities that are as mundane as calling home while driving oras complex as landing a packed 747 in severe weather.