Time-Sharing Visual and Auditory Tracking Tasks

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Abstract
Multiple resource theory suggests that distributing demands over separate resources will reduce resource competition and improve time-sharing efficiency. A recent hypothesis however suggests that the benefits of utilizing separate resources for the time-shared tasks may be mitigated if the two tasks are integrated. The present experiment examined the benefits of distributing the input demands of two tracking tasks as a function of task integrality. Visual and auditory compensatory tracking tasks were used. Timesharing two tracking tasks with the same order of control is said to be more integrated than with different orders of control. Results show that presenting the two tracking signals in two input modalities did not improve time-sharing efficiency. This was attributed to the difficulty insensitivity phenomenon. Whether utilizing the same control dynamics between the time-shared tasks could generate an integrality effect was unclear from the present data. A continuous auditory task that could offer comparable spatial information as the visual counterpart was proposed to be valuable for studying attentional processes, information display alternatives, and workload assessment.

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