Huh, What Was I Doing? How People Use Environmental Cues after an Interruption

Abstract

The authors examine the effects of environmental cues on being interrupted while performing a task. They conducted an experiment in which participants, after an interruption, received either a blatant environmental cue of their previous action (a red arrow), a subtle environmental cue of their previous action (a cursor that was placed in the same location as their previous action), or no environmental cue at all. The authors found that participants in the blatant condition resumed their task faster than participants in the other two conditions. Furthermore, a subtle environmental cue was no better than no cue at all. The results support their model of memory for goals.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 2005
Accession Number
ADA480254

Entities

People

  • Derek P. Brock
  • Erik M. Altmann
  • J. Gregory Trafton

Organizations

  • United States Naval Research Laboratory

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Cognitive Science
  • Cognitive Systems Engineering
  • Electronic Messaging
  • Environment
  • Human Factors Engineering
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Information Processing
  • Information Systems
  • Military Research
  • New York
  • Psychology
  • Standards
  • Task Performance And Analysis
  • Three Dimensional
  • User Interface

Fields of Study

  • Psychology

Readers

  • Brain and Cognitive Science; Experimental Psychology; Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Educational Psychology
  • Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of Proposed Air Force Base Actions.