Multitasking and Performance under Time Pressure

This study is intended as an investigation of relationship between task-switching and time pressure. Task-switching means switching attention from one task to another task. There are two sub-categories: task-switching which is involuntary task-switching, switching task caused by external stimulus, and voluntary task-switching, switching task caused by internal motivation. To investigate whether time pressure makes people do task-switching more frequently and perform task better or not, an experiment was executed. The existence of stopwatch was set as independent variable. The number of task-switching and result of task performance were set as dependent variables. After the experiment, a survey was taken by participants to examine their evaluation on experiment, time pressure, and preference of task-switching. As a result, task-switching occurred more frequently in timer condition when participants were not interested in tasks. Moreover, participants performed tasks better in timer condition when the difficulty level of task was high. These results lead to the conclusion that effect of time pressure varies according to interest in tasks and level of difficulty.