Acquisition and transfer of attention allocation strategies in a multiple-task work environment.
OBJECTIVE
Payoff effects on strategy development and change were assessed in a synthetic work environment, SYNWORK1.


BACKGROUND
Many work settings require several tasks to be performed concurrently. It is important to know how the strategies used in performing the respective tasks vary with payoffs.


METHODS
Sixty students performed four tasks in SYNWORK1, for which points are received for correct responses and lost for incorrect responses. Individual-task payoffs were varied between participants and were changed after 8 and 12 sessions to examine the effects of a previous strategy on development of a new strategy.


RESULTS
Participants were sensitive to initial payoffs and modified their strategies when payoffs changed. However, residual effects of prior payoffs were evident.


CONCLUSIONS
Payoffs for multiple-task environments need to be explicit, and practice should be provided for strategy development. When payoffs change, strategies adopted reflect current and previous payoffs.


CONCLUSIONS
The findings can be applied to the design of payoff schedules for multiple-task environments.
Wang
Dong-Yuan Debbie
DY
Psychology Department, University of North Florida, Jacksonville, FL 32224-2673, USA. dwang@unf.edu
Proctor
Robert W
RW
Pick
David F
DF
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D001359:Aviation; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D017132:Workplace