Multitasking as Skill Acquisition - eScholarship

Multitasking as Skill Acquisition Frank J. Lee (fjl@rpi.edu) Department of Cognitive Science, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Troy, NY 12180 USA Niels A. Taatgen (niels@ai.rug.nl) Artificial Intelligence, University of Groningen Groningen, The Netherlands Abstract Multitasking allows people to cope with the ever changing and complex world that we live in. However, as much as cognitive scientists have learned about the details of human cognition, the question of how people acquire multitasking ability remains a mystery. In this paper, we argue that multitasking can be best understood as a product of skill acquisition. In particular, we describe production composition, a computational theory of procedural skill acquisition, which can account for the acquisition of multitasking skill. We explore this idea in this paper as part of our effort to develop a cognitive model of a simulated air-traffic controller Task. Introduction Multitasking is a critical ability that allows people to cope with and flourish in the complex world that we live in. However, as much as cognitive scientists have learned about the inner workings of human cognition, our ability to multitask remains a mystery. In this paper, we argue that we can best understand multitasking as a product of production composition (Taatgen & Lee, submitted), a computational theory of procedural skill acquisition that has been implemented within in the ACT-R framework (Anderson & Lebiere, 1998). Production composition has been used successfully to account for skill acquisition in a wide variety of domains including language learning (Taatgen & Anderson, submitted) and individual differences in complex skill acquisition (Taatgen, 2001). We believe that it can also be used to account for the acquisition of multitasking skill. Multitasking Multitasking is the ability to handle the demands of multiple tasks simultaneously. At the most basic level, this may involve executing multiple perceptual-motor actions at the same time, such as moving your attention to the next lane and turning the steering wheel. At a more complex level, this may involve interleaving the steps of many complex tasks, such as shifting down to a lower gear while navigating a curve and carrying on a conversation. Important insights into people’s ability to multitask come from the dual-task performance literature. One such insight is that while there is some interference between the two tasks that are being performed (with a caveat regarding the modality of stimuli and responses), people can consciously trade off performing one task for the other (Wickens & Gopher, 1977). Another is that people’s performances in both tasks depend highly on their skill in the individual tasks (Allport, Antonis, & Reynolds, 1972). That is, being skilled in one task allows a person to perform it and other tasks with negligible impact on the overall performance of both tasks. For example, a skill driver might have little difficulty talking with a friend while driving, whereas a novice driver might find it difficult. Skill Acquisition Anderson (1982) proposed a theory of skill acquisition in terms of transitioning from declarative knowledge to procedural knowledge through a process called knowledge compilation. Initially, knowledge is in declarative form and is interpreted. Interpreting declarative knowledge is slow and may lead to errors, especially if the relevant knowledge cannot be retrieved when needed or erroneous knowledge is retrieved instead. With practice, declarative knowledge is compiled into procedural knowledge and is fast and free of errors. Newell and Rosenbloom (1981) proposed an alternate theory of skill acquisition called chunking that became an important component of the Soar cognitive architecture (Newell, 1990). Within Soar, skill acquisition is a function of combining multiple procedures into a single procedure and converting the current goal context into a more specialized procedure. Production Composition Production composition is a theory of skill acquisition that incorporates aspects of both Anderson’s and Newell and Rosenbloom’s account. It involves compiling declarative knowledge into procedural knowledge and combining multiple procedures into a new procedure. Consider the process of retrieving