Graded and Multimodal Interruption Cueing in Support of Preattentive Reference and Attention Management

A decade ago, attention management was considered by some "the least explored frontier in cognitive science and human-machine cooperation" (Woods et al., 1994). Today, at least one aspect of attention management – interruption handling – still poses a major challenge for the design of human-machine systems and computer-supported collaborative work. Successful interruption management requires that both unintentional dismissals and preemptive integrations of interruption signals are avoided (Latorella, 1999). One means of achieving this goal is to support preattentive reference, i.e., the processing of interruption signals that occurs before attentional selection. Operators need to be provided with at least partial information about the nature and cognitive requirements of a potential interruption, and this information should be presented in a way that allows for peripheral access. This paper will discuss and illustrate how currently underutilized graded and multimodal information presentation could help accomplish this goal and support various stages of the overall interruption management process.