Strategy application disorder: the role of the frontal lobes in human multitasking

Abstract

Strategy application disorder is a term used to describe a pattern of deficits, usually associated with frontal lobe dysfunction, where people show disorganisation, absentmindedness and problems with planning and decision making in everyday life despite normal performance on traditional neuropsychological tests. It is argued that the prototypical situation which presents problems for these cases are those which require multitasking, and although good cases are rare in the literature, those that do exist show a characteristic neuropsychological pattern. Moreover, this pattern is confirmed in recent group studies of multitasking and of the relationship between multitasking tests (such as the Six Element Test), failures in everyday life and other neuropsychological measures. At present the evidence suggests that the potential frontal brain regions most implicated in multitasking are the anterior cingulate; B.A. 10 and immediately adjacent areas; and the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, with each making a unique contribution to different aspects of performance. Furthermore, recent studies show striking dissociations between performances on multitasking tests and two of the most commonly administered measures of executive function: the verbal fluency test and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, which sets a minimum level for a fractionation of the executive syndrome in humans.

Investigating Multitasking in High-Functioning Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders Using the Virtual Errands Task

“…Burgess (2000aBurgess ( , 2000bShallice & Burgess, 1991) has shown that multitasking is sensitive to the impact of frontal lobe damage in adults, even in cases where standard tests of EF are not. This suggests that multitasking paradigms might have a greater sensitivity for detecting EF difficulties, which would be beneficial when assessing clinical populations.…”

Separate influences in learning: Evidence from artificial grammar learning with traumatic brain injury patients

“…TBI is typically acquired as the result of falls or traffic accidents and predominantly implicates prefrontal cortex structures of the brain (Bigler, 2001;Taber et al, 2006). Accordingly, TBI often has little effect on measured intellectual ability or long term memory (Burgess, 2000), yet results in impaired executive functions, characterized by poor decision making and difficulty in planning and organizing daily activities (Wood 2001;Baddeley, 2002). Note that other AGL researchers have employed patient populations, but never before has a TBI sample been used in the context of AGL or the implicit-explicit distinction (Knowlton & Squire, 1994Smith & McDowall, 2005.…”

Resistance to the impact of interruptions during multitasking by healthy adults and dysexecutive patients

“…Burgess (2000) has provided a detailed description of the features involved in this kind of multitasking situation, prototypical examples of which are cooking a meal, or carrying out a range of errands in a shopping centre. Multitasking has so far been studied in the neuropsychological literature by contrasting the performance of brain lesioned patients with that of matched controls, on tests designed to tap similar cognitive processes to those involved in real life multitasking.…”

“…Interruptions were one of the features identified by Burgess (2000) as characteristic of a multitasking situation. Despite this, studies that have examined the multitasking deficits of patients, have not tested the ability of patients to deal with externally imposed interruptions during these kinds of tests.…”

“…One account might suggest that patients would find the interruptions more disruptive than would the healthy adults, as previous evidence shows that patients have trouble switching between different tasks in a multitasking situation and in applying an effective strategy overall (Burgess, 2000). The interruption could overload them further by imposing another demand to switch tasks.…”