Making decisions under increasing work load demands: the need to look ahead

The relation between decision-making performance and imposed work load is explored relative to a dynamic multitask decision problem. An experimental and analytical study shows how changes in key task parameters, such as the number of concurrent tasks and the time available and/or required to process a task, affect the decision-maker´s performance. The normative-descriptive multitask decision model (MTDM), based on modern control and estimation techniques and probabilistic theories of individual choice behavior, is used to predict human information processing and decision-making in the dynamic multitask environment. Incorporation of the ability to look ahead in formulating the subjective expected value of the net worth of acting on a particular task for a given processing time is shown to be a key feature of the modeling approach