Shifting Between Cognitive and Visual Distraction: The Impact of Cognitive Ability on Distraction Caused by Secondary Tasks

We conducted an experiment in order to investigate impacts of central executive (CE) functions and modality of secondary task presentation in a dualtask experiment. We found that shifting ability, out of three major CE functions (inhibition, shifting, and updating) was particularly important in determining whether primary (pedal-tracking) task performance was better in the presence of auditory, vs. visual, presentation of the secondary task.