Citation

Scerra VE, Brill JC. Proc. Hum. Factors Ergon. Soc. Annu. Meet. 2012; 56(1): 1456-1460.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1071181312561409

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to use established measures of attentional reserve capacity to test for the existence of tactile-specific resources in the context of Wickens' (1984, 2002) Multiple Resource Theory. Participants performed a primary counting task in the tactile modality and were presented with a concurrent secondary attention task in the visual, auditory, and tactile modalities. The data indicate a significant difference in performance based on whether the dual-task conditions were performed crossmodally or unimodally, in terms of percent correct and response time to target stimuli. Specifically, participants performed significantly worse in tactile-tactile dual-task conditions, suggesting performance was degraded as a function of resource depletion. Furthermore, participants rated the unimodal dual-task conditions as significantly harder, using a subjective workload rating, than either of the dual-task crossmodal conditions, or the single task condition. The results suggest that task interference was a function of resource limitation rather than structural interference, providing direct empirical evidence supporting the inclusion of tactile resources in Wickens' Multiple Resource Theory.

Language: en