Resuming after Interruption: Exploring the Roles of Spatial and Goal Memory

Interruptions research has generally focused on the factors that make interruptions more or less disruptive to primary task performance, the ways in which people engage the interruption as they disengage from a primary task, and the role of environmental context/cues in primary task resumption. However, little research has focused on investigating the processes by which a person reorients to and resumes the primary task following an interruption. This research explores the potential roles of spatial location and goal memory in the process of resumption. The experiment reported uses a new paradigm in which, following an interruption, a person can be returned to a different task and/or a different location. We found that both goal memory and spatial memory play a role in resuming the primary task following an interruption. However, there is still not a clear picture of how the two interact, and it may be that individual differences play an important role in how people deal with interruptions.