Task interruption: Resumption lag and the role of cues

Abstract

The consequences of interrupting someone in the middle of a complex task are of considerable practical and theoretical interest. We examine one behavioral measure of the disruption caused by task interruption, namely the resumption lag, or the time needed to “collect one’s thoughts” and restart a task after an interruption is over. The resumption lag (in our task environment) was double the interval between uninterrupted actions (3.8 s vs. 1.9 s), indicating a substantial disruptive effect. To probe the nature of the disruption, we examined the role of external cues associated with the interrupted task, finding that cues available immediately before an interruption facilitate performance immediately afterwards (reducing the resumption lag). This cue- availability effect suggests that people deploy preparatory perceptual and memory processes, apparently spontaneously, to mitigate the disruptive effects of task interruption.