Strategic Control of Time-Sharing Performance

分时执行的战略控制分时或在多个任务之间分配注意力是许多活动的重要组成部分，例如驾驶和驾驶。 但是，分时性能经常被观察到从单任务性能水平下降。 更好地理解时间共享的能力和局限性与理解注意力的本质密切相关。 它也是最有用的设计和评估许多日常活动和许多职业任务，如飞行器稳定性，而在驾驶舱航行。 例如，使用移动电话时发生机动车碰撞的风险比不使用移动电话时高出四倍，无论是否涉及手动操作。 这意味着中枢神经系统受限。 本研究旨在更好地理解分时租赁的战略控制，并对分时租赁限制的两种主要理论观点进行了检验。 瓶颈理论假设注意力是信息处理系统中的一个瓶颈，沿着信息处理系统，需要连续处理多个任务。 资源理论假设在分时任务之间分配的注意力是有限的，当一个任务的性能由于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）范式几乎被完全用于检验瓶颈理论，相对优先操作范式被用于检验资源理论。 本研究将考察从这些测试中得出的不同结论在多大程度上受到所用方法的限制。从两种范式的结合中得出的趋同证据将有助于更深入地理解注意力的本质及其对表现的影响。 结果应该会添加到一个已经相当丰富的双任务数据库中。 所提出的收敛操作和方法上的改进将为进一步理解注意机制提供一个新的和强有力的竞技场。 这种理解对日常活动有着深远的影响，比如在驾驶奥拉斯时打电话回家，或者在恶劣天气下降落一架满载的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.