Recovering from interruptions: implications for driver distraction research

This research adopted a model of goal activation to study the mechanisms underlying interrupted task performance. The effects of interruption timing, type of interruption, and age on task time and primary task resumption time were explored under conditions in which attention was switched back and forth between two tasks, much as when drivers shift attention between attending to the road and to an in-vehicle task. The timing of interruptions had a significant impact on task resumption times, indicating that the most costly time to interrupt task performance is during the middle of a task. However, this effect was overshadowed by age-related performance decrements for older participants. Interruptions that prevented strategic rehearsal of goals resulted in longer resumption times as compared with interruptions that allowed rehearsal. Actual or potential applications of this research include the design of in-vehicle device user interfaces, the timing of in-vehicle messages, and current metrics for assessing driver distraction.