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The Influence of Task Interruption on Individual Decision Making: An Information Overload Perspective
Author(s) -
Speier Cheri,
Valacich Joseph S.,
Vessey Iris
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
decision sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.238
H-Index - 108
eISSN - 1540-5915
pISSN - 0011-7315
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-5915.1999.tb01613.x
Subject(s) - information overload , perspective (graphical) , task (project management) , computer science , knowledge management , process management , cognitive psychology , psychology , artificial intelligence , business , management , world wide web , economics
Interruptions are a common aspect of the work environment of most organizations. Yet little is known about how interruptions and their characteristics, such as frequency of occurrence, influence decision‐making performance of individuals. Consequently, this paper reports the results of two experiments investigating the influence of interruptions on individual decision making. Interruptions were found to improve decision‐making performance on simple tasks and to lower performance on complex tasks. For complex tasks, the frequency of interruptions and the dissimilarity of content between the primary and interruption tasks was found to exacerbate this effect. The implications of these results for future research and practice are discussed.