Does attention solve the "apples-and-oranges" problems of judging task difficulty and task order?

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Human Factors Engineering
• Task Analysis

Background:

• Comparing and sequencing diverse tasks by difficulty requires a common metric.
• The nature of this metric, if it exists, remains unidentified.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether people utilize attention time proportions (ATPs) as a basis for comparing and sequencing tasks of varying difficulty.
• To determine if ATPs can serve as a common currency for task difficulty assessment.

Main Methods:

• Three participant groups were utilized.
• One group estimated attention time proportions (ATPs) for intellectual (counting) and physical (locomotion) tasks.
• Two groups made forced-choice judgments on task difficulty and preferred sequencing, using tasks with independently obtained ATPs.

Main Results:

• Estimated ATPs were found to correlate with participants' judgments of task difficulty.
• ATPs also predicted the preferred order in which participants sequenced the tasks.
• This suggests a quantifiable basis for subjective task comparison.

Conclusions:

• Attention time proportions (ATPs) appear to function as a cognitive metric for evaluating and ordering tasks by difficulty.
• The findings support the hypothesis that perceived time investment, specifically attention, underlies task comparison and sequencing.
• This has implications for task design, training, and understanding cognitive load management.