Abstract
Performing multiple tasks simultaneously usually affects the behavioral performance as compared with executing the single task. Moreover, processing multiple tasks simultaneously often involve more cognitive demands. Two visual tasks, lane-keeping task and mental calculation, were utilized to assess the brain dynamics through 32-channel electroencephalogram (EEG) recorded from 14 participants. A 400-ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) factor was used to induce distinct levels of attentional requirements. In the dual-task conditions, the deteriorated behavior reflected the divided attention and the overlapping brain resources used. The frontal, parietal and occipital components were decomposed by independent component analysis (ICA) algorithm. The event- and response-related theta and alpha oscillations in selected brain regions were investigated first. The increased theta oscillation in frontal component and decreased alpha oscillations in parietal and occipital components reflect the cognitive demands and attentional requirements as executing the designed tasks. Furthermore, time-varying interactive over-additive (O-Add), additive (Add) and under-additive (U-Add) activations were explored and summarized through the comparison between the summation of the elicited spectral perturbations in two single-task conditions and the spectral perturbations in the dual task. Add and U-Add activations were observed while executing the dual tasks. U-Add theta and alpha activations dominated the posterior region in dual-task situations. Our results show that both deteriorated behaviors and interactive brain activations should be comprehensively considered for evaluating workload or attentional interaction precisely.
Highlights
Humans are immersed in an overload of sensory information in their interaction with the environment
The impaired solution time (ST) of the mental calculation reflected the attentional interaction and overlapping resources used during the dual-task situations
Rather than O-Add activation in the human brain, Add and U-Add activations were primarily identified in this dual-task study with a 400-ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA)
Summary
Humans are immersed in an overload of sensory information in their interaction with the environment. Performing multiple tasks leads to attentional interference in which humans must shift their attention between multiple operations (Mishra et al, 2013). Previous findings suggest that attentional interaction results in an increased reaction time (RT) or high error rate (Norman and Bobrow, 1975; Pashler, 1994; Lin et al, 2011), reflecting the overlapping resources used during dual situations or multitasking (Salvucci and Taatgen, 2008). Limited attention leads to a bottleneck when processing multiple cognitively demanding operations simultaneously (Pashler, 1994; Salvucci and Taatgen, 2008)
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