Information maintained in working memory (WM) has the potential to bias selective attention and limit executive attention. The current study assessed the influence of information in WM on the tasks one chooses to perform in a multitasking environment. Participants held either identities or locations in WM while performing voluntary task-switching trials on stimuli that did or did not match the ...

We introduce a bipartite, diluted and frustrated, network as a sparse restricted Boltzmann machine and we show its thermodynamical equivalence to an associative working memory able to retrieve several patterns in parallel without falling into spurious states typical of classical neural networks. We focus on systems processing in parallel a finite (up to logarithmic growth in the volume) amount ...

This paper describes an algorithm to cluster and segment sequences of low-level user actions into sequences of distinct high-level user tasks. The algorithm uses text contained in interface windows as evidence of the state of user–computer interaction. Window text is summarized using latent semantic indexing (LSI). Hierarchical models are built using expectation–maximization to represent users ...

Standard approaches in entity identification hard-code boundary detection and type prediction into labels and perform Viterbi. This has two disadvantages: 1. the runtime complexity grows quadratically in the number of types, and 2. there is no natural segment-level representation. In this paper, we propose a neural architecture that addresses these disadvantages. We frame the problem as multita...

Previous work suggests that relative increases in socially evaluative threat modulate the psychobiological stress response. However, few studies have compared stressors which manipulate level of to participant is exposed. Here we present two studies. In first, assessed integrity an ecologically valid, laboratory stressor (direct evaluated multitasking) and its effects on acute reactivity abilit...

I used to be good at multitasking. I could remember multiple steps and details related to a variety of tasks, and I could carry them out all at once. It was a skill that helped me be an accomplished waitress in college and a top-notch medical student and intern. As my life has become more complex (I’m now a wife, mother, teacher, and doctor), multitasking has become more difficult. I have start...

There is considerable lay discussion that children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have increased difficulty with multitasking, but there are few experimental data. In the current study, we examine the simultaneous processing of two stimulus-response tasks using the Psychological Refractory Period (PRP) effect. We hypothesized that children with ADHD would show a greater PR...