Multitasking with Alexa Multitasking with Alexa: How Using Intelligent Personal Assistants Impacts Language-based Primary Task Performance
This research addresses the problem of quantifying IPA multitasking impacts for users, particularly in language-heavy contexts, but is incremental as it builds on existing cognitive theories.
The study investigated how using an Intelligent Personal Assistant (IPA) like Alexa affects multitasking performance in language-based primary tasks, finding that content generation tasks were significantly more disrupted than copying tasks due to shared cognitive resources.
Intelligent personal assistants (IPAs) are supposed to help us multitask. Yet the impact of IPA use on multitasking is not clearly quantified, particularly in situations where primary tasks are also language based. Using a dual task paradigm, our study observes how IPA interactions impact two different types of writing primary tasks; copying and generating content. We found writing tasks that involve content generation, which are more cognitively demanding and share more of the resources needed for IPA use, are significantly more disrupted by IPA interaction than less demanding tasks such as copying content. We discuss how theories of cognitive resources, including multiple resource theory and working memory, explain these results. We also outline the need for future work how interruption length and relevance may impact primary task performance as well as the need to identify effects of interruption timing in user and IPA led interruptions.