Building a Framework for a Dual Task Taxonomy

Table 1

Common methods of measuring dual task performance. In this table we have provided three measures commonly used in the dual task literature to quantify differences in task performance when two tasks are executed simultaneously. The AAI and DTE are both calculations that are easily integrated into clinical practice to determine effects of multitasking.

Name	Measurement	Description
Performance-resource; operating characteristic; (POC) [15]	Graphic display showing scales for performance of each individual task performed in conjunction with a second task	Between task trade-off; A plot in which the distribution of attention for the two tasks is shown; the influence of one task on another is visualized (see Figure 1)
Attention Allocation Index; (AAI) [16]	, where; = prioritized task,; = secondary task, and = task of interest when priorities are equal	Within task trade-off; 1 indicates total allocation of attention to the prioritized task and −1 indicates a complete shift away from the prioritized task
Dual task effect (DTE)	(Dual − single)/single  ± 100%; (+) Multiplier for variables with positive relationships and (−) multiplier for those with negative relationships	A decrement due to dual tasking is represented by a (−) result and an improvement by a (+) result