Adaptive Executive Control. Flexible Human Multiple-Task Performance without Pervasive Immutable Response-Selection Bottlenecks

A new theoretical framework, the EPIC( Executive-Process/Interactive-Control) architecture, provides the basis for accurate detailed computational models of human multiple-task performance. Contrary to the traditional response-selection bottleneck hypothesis, EPIC's cognitive processor can sele...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Meyer, David E, Kieras, David E, Lauber, Erick, Schumacher, Eric H, Glass, Jennifer
Format: Report
Language:English
Subjects:
ADAPTIVE CONTROL SYSTEMS
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
COGNITION
COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE
CONCURRENT ENGINEERING
CONTINUOUS PROCESSING
Cybernetics
DECISION MAKING
EXECUTIVE ROUTINES
INFORMATION PROCESSING
LEARNING MACHINES
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
MEMORY(PSYCHOLOGY)
MENTAL ABILITY
PARALLEL PROCESSING
PERCEPTION(PSYCHOLOGY)
PERFORMANCE(HUMAN)
Psychology
REACTION TIME
REACTION(PSYCHOLOGY)
SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
STIMULATION(PHYSIOLOGY)
STOCHASTIC PROCESSES
WORKLOAD
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Summary:A new theoretical framework, the EPIC( Executive-Process/Interactive-Control) architecture, provides the basis for accurate detailed computational models of human multiple-task performance. Contrary to the traditional response-selection bottleneck hypothesis, EPIC's cognitive processor can select responses and do other procedural operations simultaneously for multiple concurrent tasks. Using this capacity together with flexible executive control of peripheral perceptual - motor components, EPIC computational models account well for various patterns of mean reaction times, systematic. individual differences in multiple-task performance, and influences of special training on people's task-coordination strategies. These diverse phenomena, and EPIC's success at modeling them, raise strong doubts about the existence of a pervasive immutable response-selection bottleneck in the human information-processing system. The present research therefore helps further characterize the nature of discrete versus continuous information processing.