From its inception on, the notion of management support systems (MS) has been closely linked to task structuredness. Using data collected with a survey questionnaire, this article presents the results of an empirical analysis of the relation between task structuredness and satisfaction with MS. Two dimensions of task structuredness are distinguished: task difficulty and task variability. The re...

It has been assumed that stimulus discrimination in a visual task is performed with fixed attentive effort. Here we show that attention to the same pair of stimuli can be modulated by varying the task difficulty when a task requires the discrimination of only a small number of different stimuli. We used a matching-to-sample paradigm, where a test stimulus is presented after a sample stimulus. W...

Work on physiological and other behavioral correlates of motives often assumes that exert a direct effect behavior once activated. Motivational intensity theory, however, suggests this does not always apply. In the context task engagement, motive strength should myocardial beta-adrenergic activity if difficulty is unclear, but known. The presented study tested prediction for impact explicit ach...

Subliminal priming is said to occur when a subliminal prime influences the classification of a subsequent target. Most subliminal-priming claims are based on separate target- and prime-classification tasks. Because primes are intended to be subliminal, the prime-classification task is difficult, and the target-classification task is easy. To assess whether this task-difficulty difference accoun...