The Effect of Frequent versus Infrequent Interruptions on Primary Task Resumption

Abstract

Recent interruptions research suggests that the timing of interruptions can play a critical role in the level of task primary disruption. An unanswered question regarding interruption timing is whether greater task disruption in terms of primary task resumption time is experienced with more frequent interruptions. The present study used a VCR programming task with a pursuit-tracking interruption task to measure how quickly people resume the primary task after an interruption. The results showed that primary task resumption times were faster for more frequent interruptions, which was contrary to the predicted outcome. In addition, frequent interruptions did not result in the more resumption errors or longer time-on-task results as predicted. These results are discussed as evidence that more frequent interruptions may compel people to adopt aggressive goal maintenance strategies when dealing with interruptions, but further research is required to fully test this hypothesis.

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