Embedded software continues to play an ever increasing role in the design of complex embedded applications. In part, the elevated level of abstraction provided by a high-level programming paradigm immensely facilitates a short design cycle, fewer design errors, design portability, and Intellectual Property (IP) reuse. In a large class of embedded systems, dynamic multitasking using traditional ...

INTRODUCTION Interruptions and multitasking are frequent in clinical settings, and have been shown in the cognitive psychology literature to affect performance, increasing the risk of error. However, comparatively less is known about their impact on errors in clinical work. This study will assess the relationship between prescribing errors, interruptions and multitasking in an emergency departm...

BACKGROUND Clinicians' use of electronic health record (EHR) systems while multitasking may increase the risk of making errors, but silent EHR system use may lower patient satisfaction. Delaying EHR system use until after patient visits may increase clinicians' EHR workload, stress, and burnout. OBJECTIVE We aimed to describe the perspectives of clinicians, educators, administrators, and rese...

We study the fine-grained relationships among information flows, IT use, and individual information-worker productivity, by analyzing work at a midsize executive recruiting firm. We analyze both project-level and individual-level performance using: (1) direct observation of over 125,000 e-mail messages over a period of 10 months by individual workers (2) detailed accounting data on revenues, co...

In this study, we develop a theoretical model that predicts an inverted-U relationship between multitasking and performance. The model is tested with a controlled experiment using a custom-developed application. Participants were randomly assigned to either a control condition, where they had to perform tasks in sequence, or an experimental condition, where they could discretionarily switch tas...

The present study used brain imaging to determine the neural basis of individual differences in multitasking, the ability to successfully perform at least two attention-demanding tasks at once. Multitasking is mentally taxing and, therefore, should recruit the prefrontal cortex to maintain task goals when coordinating attentional control and managing the cognitive load. To investigate this poss...

Apathy, defined as a reduction in voluntary goal-directed behaviors, is one of the most common behavioral symptoms encountered in Alzheimer disease (AD). However, the processes underlying the different components of apathy are still unclear. The aim of this study was to explore a particularly important aspect of executive function in daily life: multitasking [assessed with the Modified Six Elem...

Two experiments (one with healthy adult volunteers and the other with controls and dysexecutive patients) assessed the impact of interruptions on a novel test of multitasking. The test involved switching repeatedly between four tasks (block construction, bead threading, paper folding, alphabetical searching) over a 10 min period. In Experiment 1, there were four groups of 20 healthy participant...

Ophir, Nass, and Wagner (2009, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 106(37), 15583-15587) found that people with high scores on the media-use questionnaire-a questionnaire that measures the proportion of media-usage time during which one uses more than one medium at the same time-show impaired performance on various tests of distractor filtering. Subs...

Several studies have shown that there is information loss during interruptions, and that multitasking creates higher memory load, both of which contribute to medical error. Nowhere is this more critical than in the emergency department (ED), where the emphasis of clinical decision is on the timely evaluation and stabilization of patients. This paper reports on the nature of multitasking and shi...