Task prioritisation in multitasking during driving: opportunity to abort a concurrent task does not insulate braking responses from dual‐task slowing
DOI: 10.1002/acp.1378
archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified
Get this paper ↗ (DOI — opens at the source; we link to it, we don't host it)
Summary
This study investigates task prioritization in dual-task driving scenarios, specifically examining whether the opportunity to abort a concurrent non-driving task protects braking responses from dual-task interference. The research addresses a limitation in previous dual-task driving studies, which often implicitly equated the importance of driving and concurrent tasks by requiring responses to both. In real-world driving, avoiding collisions dictates that braking should hold maximum priority. The authors aimed to determine if explicit instructions to prioritize braking and ignore concurrent tasks would eliminate the slowing of braking reaction times typically observed in dual-task conditions. The researchers employed a driving simulator using a "change task" paradigm, where participants performed a braking task (responding to a lead vehicle’s brake lights) and a concurrent choice task (judging the number of auditory beeps). Participants were instructed to abort the choice task whenever braking was required. The study manipulated two factors: the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between the tasks (braking first, simultaneous, or choice first) and the presence of a redundant signal (a vibrating tactor or screeching tire sound) accompanying the brake lights. This design allowed the authors to test the "race to the bottleneck" hypothesis derived from the Central Bottleneck model, which posits that early processing stages compete for access to a serial central processor. Despite instructions to prioritize braking, participants frequently responded to the choice task before braking, resulting in significant dual-task slowing for braking responses. The results supported the Central Bottleneck model: the task whose stimulus was processed first "won the race" to the central processor, while the other task was delayed. Braking reaction times were substantially slower when the choice task was responded to first compared to when braking was the first response. The redundant signal effectively sped up early processing for the braking task, increasing the likelihood that braking would be the first response and reducing braking reaction times. However, even with the redundant signal and explicit priority instructions, braking responses were not fully insulated from interference when the choice task captured the central processor first. The findings indicate that drivers cannot easily abort processing of a concurrent task once it has engaged central cognitive resources, even when that task is deemed low priority. This suggests that dual-task interference in driving is driven by fundamental cognitive architecture limitations rather than just strategic prioritization. The study implies that driver-assistance systems should incorporate redundant signals to accelerate the early processing of critical driving cues, thereby increasing the probability that driving tasks win the race to the central bottleneck. This approach may help mitigate dual-task slowing and improve safety in multitasking driving environments.
Provenance
The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via openalex_abstract on 2026-05-08.
| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-07 |
| archive | success | canonical_url | — | — | 7 | 2026-06-09 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-09 |
| clean | success | clean | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| chunk | success | chunk | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| embed | success | embed | Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| enrich | success | openalex | — | — | 2 | 2026-05-08 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-07 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 1 | 2026-06-09 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 15 | 2026-06-11 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-09 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-09; verification: verified.
Topics
Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.
Information type
What kind of knowledge this paper contributes, grouped by family — independent of topic (what it is about) and method (how it was studied).
- Empirical Findings: behavioral performance data
- Theoretical Contribution: theory or model