The Get Ready Mind‐Set: How Gearing Up for Later Impacts Effort Allocation Now (original) (raw)
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Neuropsychologia, 2011
We investigated neuro-cognitive mechanisms involved with coordination of attention between current task performance and future action plans in prospective memory. We developed a novel task paradigm with continuous performance of a prospective memory task, where trial intervals of prospective memory targets were systematically manipulated in a periodic cycle of expanding and contracting target intervals. We found that subjects’ behaviour was significantly modulated without awareness of this temporal sequence of the targets: remembering to perform a prospective memory response to target events was more successful and faster in the expanding target interval phase, at the cost of lower and slower performance of ongoing tasks, while an opposite direction of this trade-off effect was observed in the contracting target interval phase. By using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we identified the similar trade-off effect in activations in the anterior medial prefrontal cortices (activation elevation at the target responses as well as deactivation at the ongoing responses in the expanding phase as compared with the contracting phase). The opposite direction of the trade-off was observed in the anterior cingulate cortex. These results show a clear case in which attention between current task performance and future action plans in prospective memory tasks is automatically regulated without particular task instructions or strategic control processes initiated by subjects. We suggest that medial areas of the frontal cortex specifically mediate the automatic coordination of attentional resources between current task performance and future action plans.
The psychology of task management: The smaller tasks trap
2020
When people are confronted with multiple tasks, how do they decide which task to do first? Normatively, priority should be given to the most efficient task (i.e., the task with the best cost/benefit ratio). However, we hypothesize that people consistently choose to address smaller (involving less work) tasks first, and continue to focus on smaller tasks, even when this strategy emerges as less efficient, a phenomenon we term the “smaller tasks trap”. We also hypothesize that the preference for the smaller tasks is negatively related to individual differences in the tendency for rational thinking. To test these hypotheses, we developed a novel paradigm consisting of an incentive-compatible task management game, in which participants are saddled with multiple tasks and have to decide how to handle them. The results lend weight to the smaller tasks trap and indicate that individual differences in rational thinking predict susceptibility to this trap. That is, participants low in ration...
Should I plan? Planning effects on perceived effort and motivation in goal pursuit
Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 2015
This research investigates how forming a plan can have both beneficial and detrimental effects on people's motivation to pursue a goal. We propose that forming a plan makes the necessary steps to pursue a goal salient, directing attention to the effort involved in executing these steps, which ultimately affects perceptions of required effort and motivation. We theorize that the impact of forming plans on motivation in goal pursuit depends on the level of difficulty to achieve a goal. When a goal is relatively easy to achieve, planning should make goal pursuit seem less effortful, thereby decreasing motivation to pursue the goal. When a goal is more difficult to achieve, planning should make goal pursuit seem more effortful, which ironically should increase motivation to pursue it. Three studies demonstrate how plans influence motivation in the domains of losing weight and saving money.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2005
This study investigated the nature of advance preparation for a task switch, testing 2 key assumptions of R. De Jong's (2000) failure-to-engage theory: (a) Task-switch preparation is all-or-none, and (b) preparation failures stem from nonutilization of available control capabilities. In 3 experiments, switch costs varied dramatically across individual stimulus-response (S-R) pairs of the tasks-virtually absent for 1 pair but large for others. These findings indicate that, across trials, task preparation was not all-or-none but, rather, consistently partial (full preparation for some S-R pairs but not others). In other words, people do not prepare all of the task some of the time, they prepare some of the task all of the time. Experiments 2 and 3 produced substantial switch costs even though time deadlines provided strong incentives for optimal advance preparation. Thus, there was no evidence that people have a latent capability to fully prepare for a task switch.
The Psychology of Procrastination: How We Create Categories of the Future
Paying bills, filling out forms, completing class assignments, or submitting grant proposals – we all have the tendency to procrastinate. We may engage in trivial activities such as watching TV shows, playing video games, or chatting for an hour and risk missing important deadlines by putting off tasks that are essential for our financial and professional security. Not all humans are equally prone to procrastination, and a recent study suggests that this may in part be due to the fact that the tendency to procrastinate has a genetic underpinning. (2) Yet even an individual with a given genetic makeup can exhibit a significant variability in the extent of procrastination. A person may sometimes delay initiating and completing tasks, whereas at other times that same person will immediately tackle the same type of tasks even under the same constraints of time and resources. A fully rational approach to task completion would involve creating a priority list of tasks based on a composite score of task importance and the remaining time until the deadline. The most important task with the most proximate deadline would have to be tackled first, and the lowest priority task with the furthest deadline last. This sounds great in theory, but it is quite difficult to implement. A substantial amount of research has been conducted (3) to understand how our moods, distractability, and impulsivity can undermine the best-laid plans for timely task initiation and completion. The recent research article The Categorization of Time and Its Impact on Task Initiation (4) by the researchers Yanping Tu (University of Chicago) and Dilip Soman (University of Toronto) investigates a rather different and novel angle in the psychology of procrastination: our perception of the future.
When an Hour Feels Shorter: Future Boundary Tasks Alter Consumption by Contracting Time
Journal of Consumer Research
Consumers often organize their time by scheduling various tasks, but also leave some time unaccounted for. The authors examine whether ending an interval of unaccounted time with an upcoming task systematically alters how this time is perceived and consumed. Eight studies conducted in both the lab and field show that bounded intervals of time (e.g., an hour before a scheduled meeting) feel prospectively shorter than unbounded intervals of time (e.g., an hour with nothing scheduled subsequently). Furthermore, consumers perform fewer tasks and are less likely to engage in relatively extended (though feasible) tasks during a bounded compared to an unbounded interval of time—even in the face of financial incentives. Finally, making a longer task easier to separate into subtasks attenuates this effect.
The role of anticipated time pressure in activity scheduling
Transportation, 1999
In the present article we focus on the cost or disutility of engaging in activities arising from the time pressure people frequently experience when they have committed themselves to perform too many activities in a limited amount of time. Specifically, we propose that anticipated time pressure increases the likelihood of two types of planning, one short-term and the other long-term encompassing different strategies for eliminating or deferring activities. In addition, we discuss several behaviorally realistic such strategies. It is assumed that strategies differ depending on whether an activity satisfies physiological needs, is performed because of institutional requirements or social obligations, or is performed because of psychological or social motives. Strategies are also assumed to differ depending on the degree to which planning is feasible. Computer simulations of available activity data are presented to illustrate consequences of the different strategies on time pressure and activity agendas.
Preparation for a forthcoming task is sufficient to produce subsequent shift costs
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2004
Shifting from one task to another is associated with significant costs. Recently, it has been questioned whether the mere preparation for a forthcoming task, without actually executing it, is sufficient to establish a new task set that results in shift costs when the execution of another than the prepared task is required. In a go-nogo study it is shown that the mere preparation for a task is sufficient to produce shift costs, but only under conditions that encourage participants to engage in advance preparation for a precued task despite the possibility that the execution of this task will not always be required because of occasional nogo-trials. In addition, considerable reductions of shift costs after go-trials could be observed under these conditions. When such a motivating context was not provided, only negligible shift costs were observed after a nogo-trial, indicating that no task-set configuration had taken place without the need to perform the task. Furthermore, under these conditions prolonging the preparation interval resulted in reaction-time benefits that were similar for task shifts and repetitions, again indicating that no active task-set configuration took place.