The Effect of Individual Differences on How People Handle Interruptions

Abstract

Some people handle interrupting and distracting events better than others, but it is not clear how to predict this. We hypothesised that when performing a primary ongoing task, people with a field independent cognitive style would be less distracted from their task by interruptions, and less likely to accept interruptions, than people with a field dependent cognitive style. We also hypothesized that when returning to the original task after an interruption, people with high spatial ability would have better memory for the physical location of their original activity, and people with high working memory would have better memory for the factual contents of their original activity. Our study participants performed an arithmetic task that was interrupted at arbitrary moments by a lexical decision task. Results showed that participants with high working memory remembered the location and contents of their original activity faster and more accurately than did participants with low working memory. Field dependence did not predict participants’ willingness to accept interruptions, and spatial ability did not predict how quickly or accurately they returned to the physical location of their original activity. However, the psychometric test instruments we chose may not have been the most appropriate. Our results confirm that working memory plays an important role in helping people recover interruptions and distractions, but further and more precise tests of field dependence and spatial ability are needed.