Adaptive Executive Control. Flexible Human Multiple-Task Performance without Pervasive Immutable Response-Selection Bottlenecks.
Abstract
A new theoretical framework, the EPIC( Executive-Process/Interactive-Control) architecture, provides the basis for accurate detailed computational models of human multiple-task performance. Contrary to the traditional response-selection bottleneck hypothesis, EPIC's cognitive processor can select responses and do other procedural operations simultaneously for multiple concurrent tasks. Using this capacity together with flexible executive control of peripheral perceptual - motor components, EPIC computational models account well for various patterns of mean reaction times, systematic. individual differences in multiple-task performance, and influences of special training on people's task-coordination strategies. These diverse phenomena, and EPIC's success at modeling them, raise strong doubts about the existence of a pervasive immutable response-selection bottleneck in the human information-processing system. The present research therefore helps further characterize the nature of discrete versus continuous information processing.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 1995
- Accession Number
- ADA299695
Entities
People
- David E. Meyer
- David Kieras
- Eric H. Schumacher
- Erick Lauber
- Jennifer Glass
Organizations
- University of Michigan