The Cognitive Load – Productivity Tradeoff in Task Switching

Although the majority of analyses of multitasking have been done in experimental settings where the tasks analyzed are non-interdependent, multitasking as it occurs in the workforce is highly complex, balancing multiple competing needs of logistical efficiency, cognitive load, and minimization of idle time. The reported study investigates multitasking in teams performing an experimental search and rescue task in Minecraft. The player in the team’s Transporter role is responsible for searching for victims and, after they have been triaged, transporting them to the appropriate location for evacuation. Player’s choices to switch tasks within and between task sets (searching vs. transporting) provide an opportunity to study interdependent task switching in the wild. That switching between task sets is more cognitively demanding than switching between tasks of the same type is well-documented. We find that an ACT-R estimate of average chunks in working memory is higher for teams that switch between task sets less frequently while scores are also higher.