The effects of secondary task performance on the temporal and spatial cueing of visual attention
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Summary
PhD dissertation reporting five experiments investigating how concurrent secondary-task performance affects the accrual and expression of primary-task knowledge in spatial- and temporal-response tasks and simulated driving. Three controlled response tasks plus two driving tasks tested whether dual-task demands suppress visual sequence learning and its later use. Across experiments, secondary-task performance reduced the accrual of visual sequence knowledge and impaired its expression, extending serial-response-task findings of multitasking-induced context blindness into more naturalistic settings.
Key finding
Secondary-task performance impairs both the acquisition and the retrieval of visual sequence memory, with effects that generalize from controlled response tasks to simulated driving.
Methodology
Exp 1: 10 participants, repeated measures across 6 sessions from 26 total. Exp 2: 20 participants, Old/New sequence comparison. On-road driving paradigm with DRT and NASA-TLX measures.
Sample size: Exp 1: N=10; Exp 2: N=20
Quality score: 5 / 5