Assessing Game Interface Workload and Usability

How is multi-tasking different from increased difficulty?

“…In Study 1 we found evidence for a load-induced decrease in drift rate regardless of the type of load manipulation. This aligns with the "residual capacity" interpretation of both the DRT (Strayer et al, 2013(Strayer et al, , 2015(Strayer et al, , 2014Thorpe et al, 2019) and workload more generally (Kahneman, 1973), and affirms the use of the DRT to address workload-based questions. We also uncovered an interesting distinction between workload induced by the addition of a task (multitasking; in our case the addition of a tracking task to the standard detection DRT), and workload increased only through increasing the difficulty within a single task (in our case increasing the number of dots to be followed within a tracking task).…”

“…It is entirely expected that the primary driver of response time changes in the DRT task is processing speed. The theoretical underpinning of the task is that of a shared, limited capacity pool of cognitive resources (see e.g., Strayer, Watson, & Drews, 2011;Thorpe et al, 2019). The drift rate of an accumulator model "maps the speed of information uptake" (Voss, Nagler, & Lerche, 2013, p.4), and would naturally be expected to decrease if there were less available processing resources.…”

“…Changes in response latency across conditions and subjects could be the outcome of numerous factors, such as the quality of the signal relative to noise, variability in the time for stimulus encoding and motor preparation, or the tendency of some individuals to be more cautious than others. Increases in DRT response times with an increase in the number or complexity of tasks have been assumed to reflect a reduction in available cognitive resources (e.g., Strayer et al, 2017;Thorpe, Nesbitt, & Eidels, 2019), implying that the primary task (i.e., not DRT) has become more cognitively demanding. In an evidence accumulation framework (e.g., Ratcliff, Smith, Brown, & McKoon, 2016) this would most naturally be explained by a diminished processing speed (often referred to as "drift rate"; e.g., Brown & Heathcote, 2008).…”

A Broader Application of the Detection Response Task to Cognitive Tasks and Online Environments

“…Our study evaluated whether the Detection Response Task (DRT), a dual-task method of measuring cognitive workload primarily applied to driving tasks, would be effective at detecting workload changes in a laboratory setting with a previously unexplored, continuous secondary task. The current research aimed to extend upon similar in-lab research (Young et al, 2013;Hsieh, Seaman, & Young, 2015;Schindhelm & Schmidt, 2015;Thorpe et al, 2019) and establish evidence for the validity of online applications. This has the potential to substantially broaden the scope of cognitive workload evaluation with the DRT, beyond small-sample, high-cost, in-lab or in-simulator experiments.…”

“…Examples of these real-world problems include large scale testing of interfaces, user displays, or user-interface -similar to research by Thorpe et al We aimed to expand on this research by evaluating the DRT in a task and situation that shared greater similarity with standard experimental cognitive psychological research than previous DRT assessments. From this, we aimed to implement an easy-to-distribute version of this task, which could potentially be used in applications such as design testing (for example, see Thorpe et al, 2019) and personnel assessment (for example, see Innes et al, 2018). Researchers working in a range of practical environments, such as learning, personnel selection, training, interface evaluation, and gaming, have noted the potential benefits of an approach like ours, which allows for real-time, continuous, and quantified measurement of cognitive workload and task performance (De Jong, 2010;De Croon et al, 2005;Haapalainen, Kim, Forlizzi, & Dey, 2010).…”