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 What is Multitasking?

In everyday life, often we have a number of different on-going tasks to manage, which cannot be tackled simultaneously. Instead, the tasks must be interleaved efficiently, switching back and forth to maximise performance, e.g. preparing a meal or a time-limited  shopping trip.
 
 busyman

In this project, funded by The Leverhulme Trust, we developed a realistic analogue of multitasking and used this to investigate the cognitive processes that underlie this important every day activity in healthy human adults.
 Project Overview
Phase A
•We created a new version of the Virtual Errands Task (see EVET) using the ValveHammer Editor, a map creation program based on the game engine Source™.
•This new task provided task completion times and detailed
information about participants’ movements within the virtual environment. 






 Phase B
•Burgess et al. (2000) proposed a model of multitasking that points to important roles for retrospective memory (memory for past events), intentionality (ability to act on future intentions) and planning.
•153 healthy adults performed the EVET along with a wider range of measures than by Burgess et al. (2000), including additional measures of planning and of working memory capacity. Structural equation modelling was used to determine the relative contribution to multitasking of each of a range of cognitive functions.
Phase C
•Several experimental studies examined the effects of manipulating factors identified in phase B on multitasking performance. Previous work used a VET with limited functionality (Law et al., 2006; McGeorge et al., 2001).