Two students try to read text for comprehension while listening to music with lyrics; a third listens to instrumental music. Based on attentional resource theory, which prediction is most accurate?
AAll three perform equally — music does not affect visual reading
BThe lyric-music students show more reading impairment because lyrics and reading compete for the same verbal/linguistic resource pool
CLyric music helps reading by maintaining arousal
DAll students perform identically after sufficient practice
Kahneman's resource model and Wickens' multiple resource theory both predict that tasks sharing a resource pool interfere more than tasks drawing from different pools. Lyrics engage verbal/linguistic processing — the same resource reading demands. Instrumental music uses primarily spatial/auditory resources and competes less. Option D is partially true long-term (automaticity) but does not describe the initial dual-task situation.
Question 2 Multiple Choice
A novice driver cannot maintain a conversation while navigating an unfamiliar route. An experienced driver chats easily on the same route. The best explanation is:
AThe experienced driver has greater total brain capacity
BPractice has shifted driving toward automatic processing, reducing its demands on the central capacity-limited bottleneck
CThe novice driver is less intelligent
DExperience physically enlarges the attentional bottleneck
Automaticity — not expanded capacity — is the mechanism. Well-practiced tasks migrate away from controlled, resource-demanding processing toward automatic processing that runs in parallel and requires little central bottleneck involvement. The capacity of the bottleneck itself does not grow; the demand placed on it by familiar tasks shrinks. This is why the dual-task ceiling is partly a function of skill level, not just fixed cognitive architecture.
Question 3 True / False
The attentional bottleneck is a fixed, early-stage filter that prevents most but one stream of sensory information from receiving any further processing.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: False
Broadbent's early-filter model proposed this, but evidence undermined it — the cocktail party effect (hearing your name across a noisy room) shows unattended information can receive at least partial semantic processing. Modern consensus places the bottleneck primarily at central response selection and decision stages, not at early sensory filtering. The bottleneck location is also not fixed: it varies with task demands, consistent with late-selection and capacity models.
Question 4 True / False
Automaticity trades processing efficiency for reduced flexibility — well-practiced tasks become harder to modify deliberately, even when you know they need to change.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: True
This tradeoff is genuine and well-documented. The Stroop effect illustrates it: skilled readers cannot suppress the automatic process of reading a word even when instructed to name the ink color instead. The same applies to any deeply practiced skill — the efficiency gain that made the task easy to dual-task comes at the cost of reconfigurability. This is why correcting deeply ingrained habits requires substantial effort even with full awareness of the problem.
Question 5 Short Answer
Explain why extensive practice on a single task can improve performance on a simultaneously performed second task, even without any practice on the two-task combination itself.
Think about your answer, then reveal below.
Model answer: Practice shifts the practiced task toward automatic processing, reducing its demands on the central capacity-limited bottleneck. With less competition for the bottleneck, the second task experiences less interference and performs better — even though neither task was practiced together.
This result distinguishes capacity-based explanations from pure coordination-based explanations of dual-task improvement. If dual-task practice were the only mechanism, you would not expect single-task practice to help. The fact that it does supports the idea that the bottleneck load is the key variable — and that automaticity genuinely reduces that load, freeing resources for concurrent tasks.