The Effect of Interruption Duration and Demand on Resuming Suspended Goals

Monk, Christopher A.
Trafton, Gregory J.
Boehm-Davis, Deborah A.

¹Department of Psychology, George Mason University
²Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC

This work was partially supported by the U.S. Office of Naval Research to J. Gregory Trafton: N0001405WX2001 and N0001405WX30020. The views and conclusions contained in this document should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the U.S. Navy.

We thank Yi-Fang Tsai and David Shin for their assistance in data collection, and the Arch Lab members for their many helpful comments on earlier drafts.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Christopher A. Monk, Department of Psychology, George Mason University, 4400 University Drive, MSN 3F5, Fairfax, VA 22030-4444. E-mail: [email protected]

Received October 2, 2007

Revision received September 17, 2008

Accepted September 25, 2008

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied 14(4):p 299-313, December 2008. | DOI: 10.1037/a0014402

The time to resume task goals after an interruption varied depending on the duration and cognitive demand of interruptions, as predicted by the memory for goals model (). Three experiments using an interleaved tasks interruption paradigm showed that longer and more demanding interruptions led to longer resumption times in a hierarchical, interactive task. The resumption time profile for durations up to 1 min supported the role of decay in defining resumption costs, and the interaction between duration and demand supported the importance of goal rehearsal in mitigating decay. These findings supported the memory for goals model, and had practical implications for context where tasks are frequently interleaved such as office settings, driving, emergency rooms, and aircraft cockpits.