Different Difficulty Manipulations Interact Differently with Task Emphasis: Evidence for Multiple Resources.
Abstract
A two-dimensional pursuit tracking task was paired with three variants of a letter typing task to test predictions about the effects of task difficulty and task emphasis derived from a model of multiple resources, which states that tasks can overlap to various degrees in their demand for resources. Under dual-task conditions, when difficulty and priorities of tasks are jointly manipulated, difficulty parameters that tap processing resources shared by both tasks interact with priorities, while parameters that are relevant to one task only have additive effects on performance. In the present experiment a fixed difficulty tracking task was paired with a letter typing task on which difficulty was manipulated by varying cognitive or motor factors. In addition, task priorties were manipulated and the instantaneous difference between actual and desired performance was continuously displayed to the subjects. Task priority in dual-task conditions had large effect on the performance of the two tasks suggesting the existence of competition for resources. Both types of difficulty manipulations had large effects on performance. However, only motor difficulty interacted with priorites. The results are interpreted to indicate that joint performance of typing and tracking mainly complete for motor-related resources, while the size of the stimulus set tap a separate resource which is primarily relevant to the letter typing task. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Feb 01, 1980
- Accession Number
- ADA097235
Entities
People
- Daniel Gopher
- David Navon
- Michael Brikner
Organizations
- Technion – Israel Institute of Technology