Dual Task Interference

Every day individuals try to juggle multiple things at once. We are face with situations where we have to act rapidly upon two or more things, specifically on the road. But when we act upon two tasks rapidly our performance worsens. If the two tasks were carried out separately individuals would have committed fewer errors. The reason our performance dwindles is based on the dual task interference. An interference which disturbs our ability to divide our attention, learn effectively, and take certain actions. Several factors are said to be correlated or influence this interference. Some examples include the motor bottleneck or the response monitoring (Bratzke, Rolke, & Ulrich 2009). Neurobiological work attributes this interference is based on the cortical field hypothesis (Herath, Klingberg, Young, Amunts, & Roland 2001). These are a few of the many leading theories for explanation of this phenomenon. In the present paper, the dual task interference and the disruption of performance will be explained by the following journal articles which explore the several factors that cause or assist this interference.

In a research article by Bratzke, Rolke, and Ulrich (2009) a study was conducted to pin point the source which carries out the dual task interference. The study came out with two possible hypotheses, the bottleneck and the response monitoring. The motor bottleneck hypothesis considers this interference to be brought by a processing limitation at a motor level (Bratzke, Rolke, & Ulrich 2009). On the other hand, the response monitoring hypothesis considers this interference to be attributed by a bottleneck process which not only chooses the suitable response but also monitors its execution (Bratzke, Rolke, & Ulrich 2009). The bottleneck model suggests that there is a limitation in people’s ability to carry out two responses in a short period of time. For this reason, when a certain stimuli is presented followed by another stimuli,...