The Effects of Interruptions on Remembering Task Information

Abstract

Interruptions can cause us to take longer to complete our tasks and lower the quality of the results. Yet, we are interrupted frequently in our daily lives by other people, by ourselves, and by our computers. We may not be able to control some of these interruptions, but it should be possible to create computer interfaces that control the interruptions. Two methods are examined in this paper. The first method is to allow the user to postpone the secondary task (the interruption). The second method is to allow the user to take a note about the current task before moving on to the interruption. In the first experiment, subjects had the choice to postpone or not and in the high cognitive workload task, 83% chose to postpone. In the second experiment, memory for details of the task was examined when the user postponed the secondary task and when they did not. There were no significant differences between the two conditions. In the final experiment, some subjects could take a note about the primary task. Counter intuitively, the subjects who could not take a note performed better on the task, but not significantly.

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