Keywords: Cognition, laboratory-study, interruptions
Key people: Jonathan Back, Anna Cox, Duncan Brumby
What are the cognitive processes that underlie successful and unsuccessful recovery from interruptions?
Interruption by Sebastiano Pitruzzello (aka gorillaradio), on Flickr
Clinical settings are extremely busy with multitasking the norm. Nurses and doctors are constantly interrupted. To make the use of medical devices safer they need to be designed in a way that helps nurses recover from interruptions in the middle of using them. To do this, however, we need to first have a deep understanding of the cognitive processes involved in interruption.
The interruptions project is developing a detailed understanding of the cognitive processes involved in managing distractions and interruptions. Why do people sometimes successfully continue where they left off, whereas at other times they do not? What kinds of errors are common when returning to an interrupted task? Are interruptions at some points in tasks more likely to lead to errors than if the person is interrupted at others? What strategies that people follow are successful in preventing these errors?
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