A Process-Model Account of Task Interruption and Resumption: When Does Encoding of the Problem State Occur?

Memory for goals theory (Altmann & Trafton, 2002) describes how people suspend and resume an interrupted task by encoding, or rehearsing, the current problem state at the point of interruption and recalling this state after the interruption. In this work we investigated the timing of the encoding process, attempting to determine the most likely strategies for when to perform encoding of interrupted problem state. We examined several candidate encoding strategies and developed computational cognitive models to represent each strategy, embedding the models into a larger model of behavior in a interruption-tracking task. Comparison of the model simulations with recent empirical data suggests that encoding of problem state occurs for a short time at the start of the interruption period and is performed concurrently with the interrupting task.