Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2007 Dec;14(6):1079-84.
doi: 10.3758/bf03193094.

Timecourse of recovery from task interruption: data and a model

Erik M Altmann  1 , J Gregory Trafton
Affiliations

Timecourse of recovery from task interruption: data and a model

Erik M Altmann et al. Psychon Bull Rev. 2007 Dec.

Abstract

Interruption of a complex cognitive task can entail, for the "interruptee", a sense of having to recover afterward. We examined this recovery process by measuring the timecourse of responses following an interruption, sampling over 13,000 interruptions to obtain stable data. Response times dropped in a smooth curvilinear pattern for the first 10 responses (15 sec or so) of postinterruption performance. We explain this pattern in terms of the cognitive system retrieving a displaced mental context from memory incrementally, with each retrieved element adding to the set of primes facilitating the next retrieval. The model explains a learning effect in our data in which the timecourse of recovery changes over blocks, and is generally consistent with current representational theories of expertise.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Psychol Rev. 2004 Oct;111(4):1036-60 - PubMed
    1. J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 1999 Sep;25(5):1120-36 - PubMed
    1. Ann Emerg Med. 2001 Aug;38(2):146-51 - PubMed
    1. Hum Factors. 2004 Winter;46(4):650-63 - PubMed
    1. J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2006 Sep;32(5):1120-32 - PubMed

Publication types