Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Effect Of Content-Related And Unrelated Break Activities On Test Results, Ryan Gentek

Theses and Dissertations

Researchers have recently explored using brief breaks to maintain performance during prolonged tasks (Ariga and Lleras, 2011). However, research has yet to fully explore the effect of break activity content on the performance of the primary task. The present study sought to explore the differing effects of two break activities that were respectively similar and different in content to the main task. The present researcher compared past studies of task-switching and interruption studies to theories of the vigilance decrement and hypothesized that a brief similar task should result in significantly different main-task performance than the brief dissimilar task. 20 participating …