Self-organized versus externally controlled task scheduling when facing multiple cognitive task requirements

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Andrea Kiesel
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: from 2015 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 274705590

In many multitasking situations, we can ourselves decide in which order we schedule the tasks that have to be performed. In this project, we compare conditions in which participants themselves organize how to cope with multiple cognitive task requirements with conditions in which task organization is externally controlled and thus task scheduling is pre-determined. In addition, we investigate the interplay of task decisions and task performance in variants of the voluntary task switching (VTS) paradigm to scrutinized flexibility in multitasking. In the first part of the project, we advanced three lines of research. First, we showed that participants who themselves organize task order profit from the possibility to see the alternative tasks while performing a task – indicated by smaller or even reversed costs when switching tasks. Yet, task organization also came across with costs, because participants indicated overall more effort in self-organized compared to externally controlled task switching. Second, we evolved a novel variant of the VTS paradigm, the self-organized task switching paradigm. With this paradigm, we were able to show that participants chose task order depending on the performance costs related to task switches compared to task repetitions. Third, we demonstrated that participants flexibly chose task order when either switch costs or task difficulty varied. The objectives for the second period of the proposed project are based on these findings that participants adapt switching behavior according to switch costs. In the second part of the project, we aim to focus on five research topics. First, we aim to optimize our self-organized task switching paradigm. Second, we want to identify manipulations that support flexible adaptation. Third, we plan a collaboration project to examine inter-individual differences in flexible adaptation across multitasking paradigms. Forth, we aim to elaborate on the mechanisms that enable participants to choose task order in relation to task performance. In detail, we ask whether the ability to adapt task choice to optimize performance relates to the ability to perceive time. And fifth, we want to investigate whether participants adapt their task choices to difficulties regarding perceptual and motor performance. This project specifically contributes to the priority program’s flexibility perspective. Regarding perspectives and objectives (Table 1 of the coordination proposal), this project is focused on the objective (2) Cognitive control and intentional set. The project also contributes to the flexibility perspective, objective (1) Basic mechanisms of capacity sharing and parallel processing of independent tasks and objective (3) Situational influence of multitask performance, and it contributes to objectives from the plasticity perspective: (3) Expertise and automatization and (4) Organizational measures and interventions improving multitask performance.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 1772: Human performance under multiple cognitive task requirements: From basic mechanisms to optimized task scheduling
• International Connection: New Zealand
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Jeff Miller, Ph.D.