Timesharing, Cognition, and Human Performance in Complex Information Systems

Abstract

Applications of advanced technology to modern systems have resulted in the requirement for the human operator to process large volumes of information at rapid rates. Such systems may impose substantial attentional and timesharing requirements on the operator, often exceeding human information processing capabilities. Consequently, there is a critical need to investigate and understand the human information processing system in order to identify generalizable, empirically derived principles of human timesharing capabilities. Of particular interest are current theoretical approaches to human attention and information processing limitations that suggest ways to improve timesharing performance. Two of these approaches, automatic information processing theory and multiple resource theory are especially relevant to the timesharing problem.