The Role of Practice in Dual-Task Performance: Toward Workload Modeling a Connectionist/Control Architecture

In: Human factors: the journal of the Human Factors Society, Volume 30, Issue 5, p. 539-566

Abstract

The literature on practice effects and transfer from single- to dual-task performance is briefly reviewed. The review suggests that single-task training produces limited transfer to dual-task performance. Past theoretical frameworks to explain multitask performance are reviewed. A connectionist/control architecture for skill acquisition is presented. The architecture involves neural-like units at the micro level of processing, with information transmitted between modules at the macro level. Simulations within the architecture exhibit five phases of skill acquisition. Dual-task interference and performance are predicted as a function of the phase of practice a skill has reached. Seven compensatory activities occur in the architecture during dual-task training that do not appear in single-task training, including (1) shedding and delaying tasks and preloading buffers, (2) letting go of high-workload strategies, (3) utilizing noncompeting resources, (4) multiplexing over time, (5) shortening transmissions. (6) converting interference from concurrent transmissions, and (7) chunking of transmissions. Future research issues suggested by the architecture are discussed.