Time Pressure Effects on Decision making in a Dynamic Task Environment (HetEffect van Tijdsdruk op Beslissingsgedrag in een Dynamische Taaksituatie)

摘要

The present experiment investigates time pressure effects on both the quality oftask performance and the underlying cognitive processes. The task that was used is dynamic in nature, such that the environment changes over time both autonomically and as a result of actions taken by the decision maker. Twenty subjects were required to monitor the fitness level of an athlete, that continually changed over time, and to recover the athlete whenever fitness decline had a physiological cause. Their major decision problem was to trade-off the costs of requesting information and applying treatments on the one hand, and increasing chances on a serious consequence on the other. The results showed that time pressure drastically declined task performance under severe time pressure, which was majorly caused by reacting too late to declines in fitness level. Subjects requested the smallest number of information under moderate time pressure. Time pressure had no significant effect on the speed of information processing.