The Cost of Location Switching during Visual Alerting: Effects of Experience and Age

Abstract

A study was conducted to investigate the switching cost of changing the location of a visual alert while participants performed a high intensity, multi-display task. Based on the proposition that the spatial window of attention can be extended to include relevant, though non-task-related information, it was hypothesized that response times to the alert would increase immediately following a change in location and then recover. Generally, results showed that this was not the case, but instead response time increased several minutes after the change in location and then recovered. Further investigation revealed that age and expertise (defined as experience with tasks involving multiple displays or video gaming), were strong moderators of the effect of slowed response after switching. Less experienced adults showed an immediate and significant cost that was not shown at all, or was shown later, by more experienced adults. Older adults showed a switching cost that was absent in younger adults. The results suggest that experience with a specific task, or more general video game experience, can guard against the cost associated with moving an alert to a new, relatively untrained location.