Thinking outside the cube: modeling language processing tasks in a multiple resource paradigm

This paper sets out to find an alternative to Wickens’ cube in order to better visually represent the different resource pools recruited by complex language processing tasks. The model’s two principal shortcomings, i.e. its inability to visually account for the notion of general resources and the difficulty to visually represent the tasks and their structural proximity, are addressed and compensated for by redrawing the cube and eventually abandoning the three dimensional design in favor of a two dimensional model, the so-called cognitive resource footprint, which we believe to be a more intuitive reflection of the resource involved in these tasks.