Fine Tuning the Timing in the Sequential Reaction Time Task

人类行为的本质特征之一是人们不断地同时进行两个或多个重叠的行为序列。 在大多数情况下，这些行动都是基于良好的学习和顺利运行的行为剧目。 我们开车，进行对话，并设法不与正在做同样事情的其他人相撞。 然而，当注意力资源被转移到其中一项任务上时，也许谈话变得非常私人或高度情绪化，或者暴风雨使驾驶变得危险，其他行为动作变得容易出错，急剧放缓，甚至完全停止。 在这些必须转移处理资源的时期究竟发生了什么是复杂的，只有部分了解。 本研究将探讨引入次要任务对主要任务绩效的影响，并考察两者之间的时间关系。 主要任务是个人必须学习一系列复杂事件的顺序，例如计算机显示器上几个物理上独立的位置中的任何一个出现一系列灯光。 第二个任务将包括一系列不同音高的音调，参与者将被要求记录一个特定音高出现了多少个音调。 最近的实验结果表明，一个人对初级刺激的反应与次级刺激的反应之间存在着令人惊讶但至关重要的关系。 具体来说，两者发生的时间越接近，次级刺激的破坏性就越小，前提是已经对初级刺激做出了成功的反应。 这一发现的含义是，次要任务不会仅仅因为它是一个“次要”任务而破坏性能。 表现受损的程度与每项任务的难度、处理每项刺激并对其做出反应所需的时间直接相关，并与两者之间的时间关系密切相关。 这些实验将详细探索这些时间关系，并使用结果来测试人类表现的各种理论模型。 从装配线工人到航空公司飞行员，从各种各样的工作场所环境中发生的事情中可以看出，这些看似平凡的问题至关重要。 了解和学习如何在这些多任务环境中微调任务之间的时间，将大大有助于提高安全性和性能。

One of the essential characteristics of human action is that people constantly carry on two or more overlapping behavioral sequences simultaneously. For most the part, such actions are based on well-learned and smoothly run behavioral repertoires. We drive a car, carry on conversations, and manage not to collide with others who are doing the same thing. However, when attentional resources are diverted to one of these tasks, perhaps the conversation becomes deeply personal or highly emotional or a pelting storm makes driving hazardous, the other behavioral actions become error prone, slow down dramatically, or even cease altogether. Exactly what takes place during these periods where processing resources must be diverted is complex and only partly understood. This research will explore the impact that introducing a secondary task has on performance of the primary task and will examine the temporal relations between the two. The primary task will be one in which individuals must learn the order of a complex sequence of events, such as a series of lights appearing in any of several physically separate locations on a computer monitor. The secondary task will consist of a series of tones of varying pitch, where the participants will be required to keep a running count of how many tones of a particular pitch occurred. Recent experimental results have shown a surprising but critical relationship between exactly when an individual responds to the primary stimulus and when the secondary event occurs. Specifically, the closer together in time the two occur, the less disruptive the secondary stimulus is, provided that a successful response has already been made to the primary stimulus. The implication of this finding is that the secondary task doesn't disrupt performance simply because it is a "secondary" task. The degree to which performance is compromised is directly related to the difficulty of each task, to the amount of time it takes to process each stimulus and respond to it, and critically related to the temporal relationships between the two. The experiments will explore in detail these temporal relationships and use the results to test a variety of theoretical models of human performance. As is clear from a moment's reflection on just what takes place in a wide variety of work place settings, from assembly-line workers to airline pilots, these seemingly mundane issues are of critical importance. Understanding and learning how to fine-tune the timing between tasks in these multiple-tasking settings will go a long way toward increases in safety and performance.