We consider a revenue optimizing seller selling a single item to a buyer, on whose private value the seller has a noisy signal. We show that, when the signal is kept private, arbitrarily more revenue could potentially be extracted than if the signal is leaked or revealed. We then show that, if the seller is not allowed to make payments to the buyer, the gap between the two is bounded by a multi...

With the increasing popularity of digital video communications over packet switching networks such as the Internet and wireless networks, error control techniques have become a critical research area. Due to its excellent scalability and performance, embedded 3-D zerotree wavelet video compression has great potential in nonconversational scalable video streaming applications. Although error con...

Practice can dramatically reduce dual-task interference, but typically does not eliminate interference entirely. Residual interference after practice is especially large with certain non-preferred modality pairings (e.g., auditory-manual and visual-vocal). Does this residual interference imply the existence of a persistent central-processing bottleneck? To address this question, we transferred ...

In this research, the controversial issue of whether the central bottleneck can be bypassed through task automatization was investigated. To examine this issue, participants received six single-task practice sessions with an auditory-vocal task (low vs. high pitch). We then assessed dual-task performance using the analytically tractable psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm, in which t...

The authors examined the role of online order control in the psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm. In the first 2 experiments, participants switched between color-letter and letter-color orders so that subtask order was isolated as the only element being switched. The results indicated that order switching impaired the 2 PRP responses and modulated the PRP effect. Importantly, these e...

The divergent predictions of 2 models of dual-task performance are investigated. The central bottleneck and central capacity sharing models argue that a central stage of information processing is capacity limited, whereas stages before and after are capacity free. The models disagree about the nature of this central capacity limitation. The central bottleneck model claims that central processin...