A STUDY ON THE BEHAVIOR UNDER MULTITASKINGCONDITIONSINA DYNAMICTASKSCENARIOINTHE CONTEXTOF HUMAN-MACHINE-INTERACTION vorgelegt von Dipl.-Psych. Jürgen Kiefer von der Fakultät V - Verkehrs- und Maschinensysteme der Technischen Universität Berlin GRK PROMETEI zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades Dr. phil. genehmigte Dissertation Promotionsausschuss: Berichterstatter: Prof. Dr. Ing. Leon Urbas Berichterstatter: Prof. Dr. Phil. Manfred Thüring Tag der wissenschaftlichen Aussprache: 05.10.2009 Berlin 2010 D 83 This document was created using the tools: • MikTex 2.7 (Freeware) • WinEdt v5.60 (Shareware) • Ghostscript, Ghostview, GSview Special thank to Tony Jameson for providing the style-files: • sfb378.sty • sfb378-apacite.sty • sfb378-apacite.bst Dipl.-Psych. Jürgen Kiefer: A Study on the Behavior under Multitasking Conditions in a Dynamic Task Scenario in the Context of Human-Machine- Interaction , vorgelegt von , © Tag der wissenschaftlichen Aussprache: 05.10.2009 pour JULES ABSTRACT The work presented here is focusing on the behavior of participants in situations of daily life, in which several demands apparently at the same time need to be dealt with. After introducing into the topic labeled as "human multitasking", embedded in situation of routine life, reasons for choosing the topic and approaching it are provided (chapter 1). In chapter 2, an overview of the history in human multitasking and task switching is given. First approaches starting at the beginning of last century up to recent approaches and ideas are presented and their impact for psychological science is displayed. Entering chapter 3, the empirical work is presented: study 1 portrays a driving simulation in a driving simulator, in which a primary task (driving) plus a concurrent task (a test of attention which was adapted for the in-car scenario) are applied. The secondary task featured three different levels. The first study gives an impression about how people manage such scenarios. Please note that the main task (driving in the simulator) was considered a dynamic task. The second study mimics study one and is a replication with the additional aspect of training and its impact on performance. With the help of study two, strategies how to handle the scenario are derived and a heuristic is described which is applied by a bunch of people. Setting of the study was taken from study one. As task configuration was expected to strongly moderate the behavior of the participants during the task scenario, main task (driving) and secondary task (test of attention) were varied: applying the lane change task (LCT), a computer-simulation for driving behavior, it was possible to better analyze the lane derivation during driving (which was taken as a measure of performance for the main task). As for the secondary task, the variations of the test of attention used in the previous two studies were systematically extended. Results of study 3 were used to illustrate the impact of task configuration for the scenario. In the last study, time pressure as additionally component was applied and its impact was measured on task performance both for main task (driving) and secondary task (test of attention). The last chapter (chapter 4) resumes the results and provides design recommendations. The work closes with a conclusion and mentions aspects that were not considered due to time constraints. v ich hatte nur diese zeit (rainer werner fassbinder) ACKNOWLEDGMENTS thank you: • Dr. Dirk Schulze-Kissing ("Ulysses") • Joachim ("Jolle") Wutke • Prof. Leon Urbas • Prof. Manfred Thüring • Prof. Hartmut Wandke • Prof. Anthony Jameson • Prof. Werner H. Tack • Dipl.-Ing. Marcus Heinath • Dipl.-Psych. Robert Lischke • Daniel Doering • Dipl.-Psych. Tobias Katus • Dipl.-Psych., Dipl.-Ing. Holger Schultheis • Dipl.-Psych. Cordula Krinner ("Miss LateX") • Dipl.-Psych. Nicola Fricke • Dipl.-Psych. Diana Woelki (apt pupil) • Dipl.-Psych. Necla Soyak • (cand.) Dipl.-Psych. Bob Kaldasch • (cand.?) Dipl.-Psych. Michael Schulz • Antti Oulasvirta (PhD) • Adam Chuderski (PhD) • Jing Qian (PhD) • Joscha Bach (PhD) • Inessa Seifert (PhD) • Dipl.-Psych. Nadya Dich • Michal B. Paradowski (PhD) • Stefan Mattes (Daimler) • Dirk Weishaar (pour Messiaen) • Karin Scherinsky-Pingel • Birgit Trogisch • Elke Fadel • Mario Lasch • ... and a few others vii CONTENTS i introduction1 1 introductory note5 1.1 Preface 5 1.2 Multitasking and human-machine interaction 7 1.3 Technology can do multitasking 8 1.4 An excerpt of recent studies 9 1.5 An ability to multitask? 10 ii theory 11 2 theoretical background 15 2.1 A short historical survey 16 2.1.1 The 1920‘s 16 2.1.2 The 1930‘s 17 2.1.3 The 1940‘s 17 2.1.4 The 1950‘s 17 2.1.5 The 1960‘s 18 2.1.6 The 1970‘s 18 2.1.7 The 1980‘s 19 2.1.8 The 1990‘s 20 2.1.9 2001: The cognitive bottleneck 20 2.1.10 2005: A general multitasking component 21 2.2 Multitasking or task interruption? 23 2.2.1 Characteristics of task interruption 23 2.2.2 The task switching question 25 2.2.3 A grammar for task scheduling 26 2.3 Single or multiple resources? 26 2.4 Summary and criticism 28 2.4.1 Need for continuous tasks in multitasking stud- ies 29 2.4.2 Training and task repetition 29 2.4.3 Cognitive heuristics - human multitasking 29 iii studies 31 3 empirical studies 35 3.1 Study I: Identification of multitasking heuristics 35 3.1.1 Method in study I 36 3.1.2 Hypothesis: D2-Drive under multitasking 39 3.1.3 Results of study I 40 3.1.4 Discussion of study I 41 3.2 Study II: Practice - multitasking heuristics 42 3.2.1 Method in study II 42 3.2.2 Hypotheses for study II 44 3.2.3 Results of study II 44 3.2.4 Discussion of study II 46 3.3 Study III: The role of task configuration 47 3.3.1 Method in study III 47 3.3.2 Hypotheses for study III 50 3.3.3 Results of study III 51 3.3.4 Discussion of study III 52 3.4 Study IV: Amplification via time pressure 52 ix x contents 3.4.1 Method in study IV 53 3.4.2 Hypotheses for IV 55 3.4.3 Results of study IV 56 3.4.4 Discussion of study IV 57 iv discussion 59 4 critical discussion 63 4.1 Scope and findings 63 4.2 Cognitive modeling 64 4.3 Design recommendations 65 4.4 Criticism and outlook 67 4.4.1 The role of memory in human multitasking 68 4.4.2 Domain independence 69 4.4.3 Need for a computational model of human multi- tasking 69 4.5 fMRI studies on multitasking 70 4.6 Popular stereotypes about multitasking 71 4.6.1 Multitasking and happiness 71 bibliography 73 a appendix 81 a.1 Appendix: Structured interview 81 LISTOFFIGURES Figure 1 A sketch on MT 6 Figure 2 Human-machine-interaction in daily life 7 Figure 3 Advertisement, Berlin (2007) 8 Figure 4 Robert Rauschenberg: First Landing Jump 10 Figure 5 A cartoon on multitasking 15 Figure 6 Jersild (1927): task switching paradigm 16 Figure 7 Model of Rasmussen (1983) 19 Figure 8 Cognitive bottleneck (Pashler, 1993) 21 Figure 9 Multitasking models - Salvucci (2005) 22 Figure 10 Interruption scenario 25 Figure 11 A grammar for task scheduling 27 Figure 12 Wickens‘ Model of multiple resources 28 Figure 13 Study I: Scenario 36 Figure 14 Study I: D2 test of attention 37 Figure 15 Study I-IV: D2-Drive 38 Figure 16 Study I: performance D2-Drive 40 Figure 17 Study I-IV: the merge heuristic 41 Figure 18 Study II: performance D2-Drive 45 Figure 19 Study II: the impact of training 46 Figure 20 Study III: the lane change task 48 Figure 21 Study III: analyzing LCT 49 Figure 22 Study III: performance D2-Drive 51 Figure 23 Study IV: scenario 53 Figure 24 Study IV: performance D2-Drive 54 Figure 25 Study IV: the impact of time pressure 56 Figure 26 Study IV: performance D2-Drive 57 Figure 27 Study IV: time pressure and D2-Drive 57 Figure 28 Study IV: eye movements 58 Figure 29 Overview of cognitive modeling 64 Figure 30 Pattern processing in D2-Drive 65 Figure 31 Modeling of D2-Drive 66 Figure 32 Pandoras box (Source: www) 67 Figure 33 Modification of LCT (Soyak, 2008) 68 Figure 34 General executive for multitasking 70 LISTOFTABLES Table 1 Controlled vs. automatic processing 18 xi xii List of Tables Table 2 Study II: Amount of attention 47 ACRONYMS UCD User-centered design LCT Lane change task IRG Information-requirement grammar AOI Areas of interest Part I INTRODUCTION 3 INTRODUCTORYNOTE 1 1.1 preface efficiency matters! In modern western society (and not only there), time is money, and the less time required to do a job or task the more efficient your work is considered to be. Even before the word multitasking itself was applied, psychological approaches towards the phenomenon of how to handle the demand of multiple tasks were reported. The intellectual debate goes back even to the ancient Greek times. "To do two things at once - is to do neither. to do two things at once is to do neither. With these words, " roman philosopher Publilius Syrus 1 describes a phenomenon which thousand of years later released a core discussion in psychology lasting almost a hundred years, and a plethora of studies investigate whether people in fact turn out to be able to perform several tasks concurrently or not. Multitasking madness, some scientists say, leads to a waste of time. The myth of human multitasking not only remains but even more gains popularity in the era of mobile computing and human computer interaction.