Multitasking During Continuous Task Demands: The Cognitive Costs of Concurrent Sensorimotor Activities

Abstract

Multitasking between continuous sensorimotor and cognitive activities is a frequent requirement of diverse activities in daily life, such as walking while holding a conversation on a mobile phone or driving while listening to a radio broadcast. These well-practiced activities appear automatic, apparently requiring very little conscious attention and control. Nevertheless, under changing circumstances, for example, when an unexpected event occurs, we become consciously aware of the demands of the concurrent sensorimotor task, shift our attention to and take control of the task and then adjust the activity to the current environmental requirements. What seems like a plausible path is much less well understood from the point of view of contemporary theoretical frameworks. This chapter elaborates the contexts of three types of continuous tasks requiring sensorimotor integration such as controlling body balance, movement timing and visuomotor tracking, as well as the context of a continuous perceptual task such as listening. Instead of conceding to the traditional dichotomy of controlled vs automatic task-related processing in these continuous multitasking situations, we follow an ecological approach and reason that performance is characterized by incremental adjustments in process autonomy depending on the demands of the involved task, the context and factors inherent to the individual.