Forewarning interruptions in dynamic settings: Can prevention bolster recovery?

Abstract

In complex dynamic work environments, the consequences of task interruptions on performance can put public safety at risk. If not designed carefully, current tools aiming to facilitate interruption recovery can instead hamper performance because of information overload. Although a simpler solution-the forewarning of an imminent interruption-has proven effective in static contexts, existing theories of task interruption do not clearly predict its impact on the resumption of dynamically evolving tasks. The current study examined the effects of a preinterruption warning in dynamic settings to develop a better understanding of task resumption and supplement current theoretical accounts. In a simulation of above-water warfare, scenarios were either uninterrupted, unexpectedly interrupted, or interrupted following an auditory warning. Behavioral, oculomotor, and pupillometric data regarding decision making, information processing, and cognitive load were computed before, during, and after each interruption (or the corresponding moment). Interruption warnings triggered a cognitively demanding preinterruption preparation that, in turn, speeded up postinterruption information processing and decision making and lowered cognitive load when resuming the interrupted task. These findings help to complement current theories of interruptions while showing that preinterruption warnings represent a promising way to support interruption recovery in complex dynamic situations. Public Significance StatementTask interruptions in safety-critical complex and continuously evolving work environments can impair performance and put public safety in jeopardy. With the aim of finding solutions to minimize their consequences, we showed that forewarning the imminent occurrence of an interruption enables participants to get ready to deal with it. Such preparation helped the subsequent resumption of the interrupted task by promoting memory of the preinterruption scene and facilitating information processing.

Resuming a Dynamic Task Following Increasingly Long Interruptions: The Role of Working Memory and Reconstruction

“…These results were consistent with our hypothesis that the effective allocation of visual attention to relevant information would become more important for resumption with increasing interruption duration, although the contribution of visual search capacity to the regression model was only slightly superior in the 30-s than in the 15-s interruption condition. Nevertheless, these results further support the importance of visual scanning in the environment when pre-and post-interruption situations differ significantly (see Labonté et al, 2019). Despite the dynamic nature of the primary task, the mental representation of the pre-interruption situation was likely sufficient to recover from a 5-s interruption because the targets were still very close to their pre-interruption position.…”

“…In summary, the current study shows that being able to keep the representation of the primary task active in memory seems to be important for dynamic task resumption even when the state of the primary task evolves during an interruption (see also Labonté et al, 2019). The current study also highlights the importance of visual search capacity for effective recovery following the suspension of a continuously evolving task, especially when encountering long interruptions.…”

“…Individuals with greater WMC are presumably better able to prevent the goals from the interrupting task to interfere with those of the primary task during the interruption and upon resumption. However, some studies have revealed that the ability to maintain pre-interruption information in memory in spite of the potential interference caused by an interrupting activity could not fully explain how an interrupted task is resumed (Miller, 2002;Salvucci, 2010;Foroughi et al, 2016c;Labonté et al, 2016Labonté et al, , 2019Nicholas and Cohen, 2016). Some of these investigations have been conducted in static contexts, which suggests that even when pre-and post-interruption scenes are identical, cognitive processes other than working memory are involved in task resumption.…”

“…Yet, since few interruption studies have been performed using continuously evolving primary tasks, the precise nature of this reconstruction process remains unclear. Labonté et al (2019) have shown that both the memory of the pre-interruption scene and the extraction of information from the post-interruption environment are central to recovery. However, when resuming a dynamic task, it can be argued that the importance of remembering pre-interruption information and preventing interference from interrupting events may be inversely proportional to interruption duration since the disparity between pre-and post-interruption scenes increases with the length of the interrupting task.…”

“…In this regard, the ability to effectively allocate visual attention to target information among distractors-namely, visual search capacity-appears to be essential for dynamic task resumption, June 2021 | Volume 12 | Article 659451 at least when the pre-and post-interruption scenes differ greatly. However, to be able to account for the relationship we observed between WMC and accuracy, threaded cognition should further emphasize the importance of the representation of the pre-interruption scene in memory even in the presence of long interruptions occurring in a dynamic context (see also Labonté et al, 2019). Furthermore, while Salvucci and Taatgen (2011) suggested that the reconstruction process differs according to the task domain, our observation of a relationship between a general measure of, on the one hand, allocation of visual attention and, on the other hand, the ease with which a dynamic target tracking task was resumed evokes the possibility that visual search capacity may be useful for the reconstruction of any interrupted dynamic task that is visual in nature.…”