Support for intelligent interruption and augmented context recovery

We describe work to support task alertness, mitigating the negative effects of interruption of one task by others competing for attention. These effects are ameliorated in two ways. First, by comparing the relative priorities of tasks from two domains, we decide whether to interrupt immediately, negotiate to interrupt completely now or later, or to schedule the interruption at the next cognitive break. Second, after interruption we support context recovery of the interrupted task, done to various depths to speed recovery from interruption. Priorities of tasks (and as a result the interruption and recovery strategies) will be adjusted according to the cognitive workload of subjects as measured through biological/physiological sensors and the accuracy and speed of task completion. One task domain involves monitoring and assessing ship mechanical system status while the second task domain involves tracking logistics requests on behalf of forward deployed ground troops. The interruption and context recovery system will be exercised on the US Naval ship Sea Shadow (IX 529).