ABSTRACT

This chapter considers four important factors that determine interference differences above and beyond those attributable to single-task difficulty: multiple resources; preemption; similarity-induced confusion; and similarity-induced cooperation. It describes the origins and tenets of multiple resource theory and then describes one particular version of the theory: the four-dimensional model proposed by Christopher D. Wickens and elaborated on by Wickens and J. G. Hollands and Wickens. The chapter demonstrates how this model can be implemented in a computational form and explores several alternative mechanisms to account for differences in divided attention and dual-task performance. Efforts have been made to extend such qualitative predictions to more quantitative ones, whereby some measure of absolute predicted performance—or dual-task performance decrements—can be derived to compare a set of systems, tasks, or interfaces.