PSYC 336 Lecture 5: 5.8 - Paying Attention VIII

• School: University of San Diego
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 336
• Professor: Appleton-Knapp

Document Summary

Proposal; you can perform concurrent tasks only if you have the resources needed for both. If the two tasks, when combined, require more resources than you"ve got, then divided attention will fail. Tasks that have overlapping resource requirements compete for resources multitasking is difficult. Tasks that are different are unlikely to interfere. Participants heard a list of words in one ear asked to shadow these words. Presented with a second list at the same time memory was tested for these items. Saw a different list of words on a screen. More errors in recognition when tasks were more similar. Hear words > see words > see pictures. Similarity among tasks is not the whole story. Ex. talking on the phone while driving. Looks like there"s little overlap in the specific demands of these tasks. But they do interfere with one another. Drivers engaged in phone conversations are more likely to be involved in accidents.