Human Performance as a Function of Future Demands

Abstract

The influence of increasing the requirements of a later RT task upon the performance of an earlier RT task was investigated in two experiments. The first experiment controlled the probability of the occurrence of the second reaction signal and the second experiment manipulated the complexity of the second task by introducing alternative distractor events to the reaction signal. The results of both experiments were interpreted as supporting a shared processing capacity theory of human performance in which the allocation of ‘preparation’ or ‘concentration’ is distributed in accordance with the demands of the component tasks.