> On 2 Oct 2017, at 01:39, Henry Neeman <[email protected]> wrote: > > Not wanting to be a downer, but .... > > I'm inclined to agree with David Wees, who > left the following comment on that page: > > "Is this a separate effect or is this > explainable with the way the memory of > A, B, C, ... and 1, 2, 3, ... are arranged > in memory? > > I know many people who need to recite the > entire alphabet, sometimes with a little > song, in order to remember that N goes after > M. And my five year old son still needs to > recite the entire list of counting numbers to > recall that 15 is after 14. > > So does this experiment measure the cost of > switching tasks or is it measuring something > else?"
Maybe one way to test that would be to have the students run backwards through the alphabet, and count down from 26, then combine the activities, and see if the effect persists? Or, to eliminate memory effects in either direction, have them draw - say - 10 squares on one piece of paper, and 10 triangles on another, then attempt to alternate between squares and triangles (on different pieces of paper) as the combined task? This should be more ‘obviously’ slower as there is physical movement between the paper, so it would be harder to distinguish between the mental switching and physical switching cost, I suppose. Not that physical switching is entirely irrelevant for distraction, mind. L. -- Leighton Pritchard [email protected] gpg/pgp:0xDECACFFC
_______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.software-carpentry.org/listinfo/discuss
