The Processing of Stimulus Attributes: Evidence for Dual-Task Integrality (Erp, P300, Time Sharing)

190 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1984.Research on dual-task performance has been concerned with delineating the antecedent conditions which lead to dual-task decrements. Capacity models of attention which postulate a hypothetical resource structure underlying performance have been employed as predictive devices. These models predict that tasks which require different processing resources can be more successfully time shared than tasks which require common resources. We suggest that dual-task decrements can be avoided even when the same resources are required by both tasks, by designing the tasks so that the processing demands can be integrated. The conditions under which we manipulated three factors likely to influence the integrality between tasks: inter-task redundancy, the physical proximity of tasks and the task relevant objects. The resource structure associated with these integrated dual-task pairs is inferred from changes in the amplitude of the P300 component of the Event-Related Brain Potential.Twelve subjects participated in three experimental sessions in which they performed both single and dual-tasks. The primary task was a pursuit step tracking task. The secondary tasks required the discrimination between different intensities or different spatial positions of a stimulus.Task pairs which required the processing of different attributes of the same object resulted in better performance than task pairs which required the processing of different objects. Inter-task redundancy, the physical proximity of task related stimuli and processing priorities also affected the performance of dual-task pairs. The results are discussed in terms of a model of dual-task integrality.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD