Gould, SJJ;
Brumby, DP;
Cox, AL;
(2013)
What does it mean for an interruption to be relevant? An investigation of relevance as a memory effect.
In:
Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting.
(pp. 149 -153).
Sage
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Abstract
Interruptions cause slower, more error prone performance. Research suggests these disruptive effects are mitigated when interruptions are relevant to the task at hand. However, previous work has usually defined relevance as the degree of similarity between the content of interruptions and tasks. Using a lab-based experiment, we investigated the extent to which memory effects should be considered when assessing the relevance of an interruption. Participants performed a routine data-entry task during which they were interrupted. We found that when participants were interrupted between subtasks, reinforcement and interference effects meant that relevance had a significant effect on interruption disruptiveness. However, this effect was not observed when participants were interrupted within subtasks. These results suggest that interruption relevance is contingent on the contents of working memory during an interruption and that interruption management systems could be improved by modelling potential interfering and reinforcing effects of incoming interruptions.
| Type: | Proceedings paper |
|---|---|
| Title: | What does it mean for an interruption to be relevant? An investigation of relevance as a memory effect |
| Event: | HFES '13 |
| Location: | San Diego, CA, USA |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1177/1541931213571034 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1541931213571034 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (http://www.uk.sagepub.com/aboutus/openaccess.htm). |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > UCL Interaction Centre |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1397068 |
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