Task-Switching Experiment (2015)

34 points11 comments2 days ago
hippari2

This is fun but I supposed you should not take this test more than a few times. After a while I notice that I read the whole ( shape, filling, position) as an input and it's quite a bit faster than initial timing.

hislaziness

The screen seems to be stuck at Wait a second... for me.

makeitdouble

It's so interesting to be able to run the experiment and see for one-self, especially if it's really a matter of 10-15min.

It should be noted that research in this domain is usually done with multi-sensory tasks (e.g https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31277054/), and not same channel input like this experiment. It better balances the cognitive load and it's also more realistic, as most people multi-tasking will be using different resources, for instance filling a form while on the phone, or sitting a team meeting while releasing in production.

LoganDark

> For example, no matter how deeply you concentrate on doing a task, if you hear someone shout "fire", you will process that information and act on it.

Not necessarily with Dissociative Identity Disorder! (Or dissociative disorders in general)

dtran

https://www.psytoolkit.org/experiment-library/experiment_mul... for the actual runnable experiment. Shared my results below (I'm pretty tired at the moment so don't feel my sharpest)— super curious what others got.

I've been trying to eliminate multi-tasking as much as I can, but the nature of startups day-to-day and even what seems like a single/monotask when zoomed out now often involves context switching (For say, investigating and fixing a user-reported bug, I might have to toggle between VSCode, localhost in browser + the DOM inspector or console, our bug tracker, our support ticketing tool, Slack, and sometimes the Cody window in VS Code/ChatGPT/Claude:

  RT in pure trials: 448ms
  RT in mixed trials: 710ms
  Mixing cost: 262ms
  RT in task-repeat trials (in mixed blocks): 710ms
  RT in task-switching trials (in mixed blocks): 975ms
  Task-switch cost: 265ms
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Balaakay

Very interesting. I will take some time tonight to run the demo. I am a big believer in not switching tasks if it can be avoided. I loved Cal Newport's book "A World Without Email" which discusses context switching in the 'information worker' space as something that brings productivity to a halt. I believe he is right.

quzyp

.

  RT in pure trials: 511ms
  RT in mixed trials: 804ms
  Mixing cost: 293ms

  RT in task-repeat trials (in mixed blocks): 804ms
  RT in task-switching trials (in mixed blocks): 1026ms
  Task-switch cost: 222ms
I think this is very easy to "train" and would expect to see significant improvements on the second and third attempt.