Dividing up the pie: allocating attention across dual-tasks

Daily life, whether at home or at work, requires people to split their attention. These simultaneous demands can be exhausting and one strategy is to reallocate attention towards a pressing demand at the expense of others. Choosing how to allocate limited cognitive resources is the basis of many psychological theories but few have directly investigated the cognitive mechanism that drives the resource allocation process. In this paper, we present a novel joint-computational approach that highlights the central role of attentional resource allocation in dual-task environments. We present two paired experiments where participants simultaneously complete a Multiple-Object-Tracking task (MOT) alongside a Detection Response Task (DRT). In breaking with previous modeling investigations, our computational framework unites separate decision-making models under the control of a single allocation process that makes accurate predictions under a range of cognitive demands. Foremost, the current investigation provides a framework for quantifying the subjective and latent processes involved in divided attention. We discuss the theoretical implications of our approach and highlight the flexibility of decision-makers to adjust where resources are spent under dynamically shifting workloads.