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.
