Understanding changes in mental workload during execution of goal-directed tasks and its application for interruption management

• DOI: 10.1145/1314683.1314689
• Publication Date: 2008-02-08T15:32:16Z
• Authors: Brian P. Bailey; Shamsi T. Iqbal
• Keywords: Task Analysis

Notifications can have reduced interruption cost if delivered at moments of lower mental workload during task execution. Cognitive theorists speculated that these occur subtask boundaries. In this article, we empirically test speculation by examining how changes execution goal-directed tasks, focusing on regions between adjacent chunks within the is, a controlled experiment, users performed several interactive tasks while their pupil dilation, reliable measure workload, was continuously measured using an eye tracking system. The data extracted from data, precisely aligned to corresponding models, and analyzed. Our principal findings include (i) throughout tasks; (ii) exhibits transient decreases boundaries relative preceding subtasks; (iii) amount decrease tends be greater completion larger task; (iv) different types subtasks induce amounts workload. We situate resource theories attention discuss important implications for management systems.