Augmentation Impacts Strategy and Gaze Distribution in a Dual-Task Interleaving Scenario

Abstract

When interleaving multiple tasks, people are confronted with a decision of how to distribute a finite amount of time between several tasks, which defines the task-interleaving strategy. In some challenging task interleaving scenarios where accurate timing is essential, people perform worse than they could have. With the growing advancement of technology, such as augmented reality, it became possible to impact people’s strategy and improve their performance. However, when augmenting visual input with additional visual content, the augmentation not only introduces the possible benefit but can also capture attentional resources. It is, thus, important to investigate how visual augmentation affects people’s performance in cases when otherwise people underscore in their performance. In the current study, using a psychophysics approach, it was investigated how visual augmentation impacts the task-interleaving strategy and, thus, performance in a dual-task setting with unequal task importance. In a simple dynamic 3D environment, four visual augmentations were generated aiming to prompt the user when it is more beneficial score-wise to switch from one task to another. The mean duration on one task before the task switch, as well as the resulting total performance, were evaluated in combination with the gaze direction distribution. In terms of the strategy and the total performance, all augmentations showed an advantage compared to when augmentation was not present. Furthermore, an abrupt augmentation onset based on the individual response time of the participant was more beneficial score-wise for the strategy compared to a constantly present visual augmentation. However, it affected the natural gaze direction distribution indicating the allocation of attentional resources to the augmentation. The results of this study provide an insight into potential visual augmentation designs aiming to improve user’s performance in a challenging dual-task interleaving setting.