INFORMATION ACCESS IN A DUAL-TASK CONTEXT - TESTING A MODEL OF OPTIMAL STRATEGY SELECTION

Pilots were required to access information from a hierarchical aviatio n database by navigating under single-task conditions (Experiment I) a nd when this task was time-shared with an altitude-monitoring task of varying bandwidth and priority (Experiment 2). In dual-task conditions , pilots had 2 viewports available, 1 always used for the information task and the Other to be allocated id either task. Dual-task strategy inferred from the decision of which task tu allocate to die 2nd viewpo rt, revealed that allocation was generally biased in favor of the! mon itoring task and was only partly sensitive;lo the difficulty of the 2 tasks and their relative priorities. Some dominant sources of navigati onal difficulties failed to adaptively Influence selection strategy Th e implications of the results are to provide tools for jumping to the top of the database, to provide 2 viewports into the common database, and to provide training as to the optimum viewport management strategy in a multitask environment.