Interruptions are a disruptive force in both our professional and personal lives. In order to develop the most comprehensive mitigation strategies, it is essential to gain insight into what factors affect the disruptiveness of interruptions. Although a significant body of research has approached this problem from the systems and tasks sides, the role of specific cognitive traits affecting interrupted task performance has been largely overlooked. In this study, participants completed measures of intelligence, adaptability, and impulsivity-reflexivity in an effort to determine whether these traits influence interrupted task performance. Intelligence scores were found to predict primary task latency, secondary task accuracy and the ability to resume the primary task following an interruption.
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