SPP 1772: Human performance under multiple cognitive task requirements: From basic mechanisms to optimized task scheduling

Basic data for this project

Description

This Project aims to bring together different lines of research on human performance under such multiple cognitive task requirements (i.e. multitasking) in order to provide a new integrative theoretical framework to account for this fundamental aspect of human behaviour.Therefore, contributions of cognitive psychology and movement science constitute the core disciplines. Of course, other disciplines, such as cognitive neuroscience, that can help to improve our understanding of cognitive and performance aspects of multitasking may provide important contributions to the work programme. This combined effort allows the Priority Programme to provide an integrated framework that brings together the issues of structure, flexibility, and plasticity in human multitasking. Specifically, this programme aims at generating a scientific matrix that consists of an array of research topics clustered in the following three broad areas. - First, it will provide a new, integrative theoretical framework that reconciles the structural perspective of immutable processing bottlenecks with the more flexible cognitive-control perspective. - Second, it will re-examine a flexible processing resources metaphor by referring both to the structural perspective in terms of modality-specific capacities and the flexibility perspective in terms of task requirements, motivational, and emotional modulation. - Third, it will assess the plasticity of human cognition and motor behaviour with respect to action optimisation in multiple task situations by focussing on training schedules and the resulting learning processes.In sum, the present programme is aimed at addressing a new research perspective by integrating existing knowledge on a fundamental aspect of human behaviour (i.e. "multitasking") across different theoretical perspectives and scientific disciplines. This basic research can also contribute to research in more applied contexts, which require high performance in multitasking.