Interruption Cost Measure

An Interruption Cost Measure is a task performance measure of the loss that a primary task incurs from a task interruption.

• AKA: Cost of Interruption.
• Context:
  • It can typically be measured objectively as a Resumption Lag.
  • It can typically depend on the point in the primary task at which the interruption occurs.
  • ...
  • It can often grow with the interruption's duration and cognitive demand.
  • It can often include errors on the primary task as well as lost time.
  • ...
  • It can range from being a time cost, such as a resumption lag, to being an error cost on the resumed task.
  • ...
  • It can be predicted from characteristics of the primary task's structure, so that a system can decide when to interrupt.
  • It can guide the design of notification delivery, for example by holding notifications until a break in the user's work.
  • It can be one form of an Attention Expenditure Measure, for the attention an interruption takes from a primary task.
  • ...
• Example(s):
  • the cost of interruption that Iqbal & Bailey, 2006 predicted from task structure, measured as resumption lag.
  • the time cost of interrupting a VCR programming task at different stages (Monk et al., 2002).
  • the errors that interruptions induce in safety-critical work such as aviation, medicine and vehicle operation.
  • ...
• Counter-Example(s):
  • an Opportunity Cost Measure, which values the next-best alternative act rather than the loss an interruption causes.
  • the interrupting task's own duration, which is not counted in the resumption cost of the primary task.
  • a Task Switching Cost, which arises when switching between tasks even when no task is suspended and resumed.
• See: Resumption Lag, Interruption Science, Task Interruption, Information Overload State, Attention Expenditure Measure.

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References

2026

• (Wikipedia, 2026) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interruption_science Retrieved:2026-10-08.
  • QUOTE: Interruptions, in almost all instances, are disruptive to performance and induce errors. Therefore, interruption science typically examines the effects of interruptions in high-risk workplace environments such as aviation, medicine, and vehicle operation in which human error can have serious, potentially disastrous consequences. ...
  • QUOTE: ... Alternatively, there are several attempts to design software applications that deliver notifications when there is an identified break from work ...

2008

• (Monk et al., 2008) ⇒ Christopher A. Monk, J. Gregory Trafton, and Deborah A. Boehm-Davis. (2008). “The Effect of Interruption Duration and Demand on Resuming Suspended Goals.” In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 14(4).
  • ABSTRACT: The time to resume task goals after an interruption varied depending on the duration and cognitive demand of interruptions, as predicted by the memory for goals model (Altmann & Trafton, 2002). Three experiments using an interleaved tasks interruption paradigm showed that longer and more demanding interruptions led to longer resumption times in a hierarchical, interactive task. ...

2006

• (Iqbal & Bailey, 2006) ⇒ Shamsi T. Iqbal, and Brian P. Bailey. (2006). “Leveraging Characteristics of Task Structure to Predict the Cost of Interruption.” In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2006).
  • ABSTRACT: A challenge in building interruption reasoning systems is to compute an accurate cost of interruption (COI). Prior work has used interface events and other cues to predict COI, but ignore characteristics related to the structure of a task. This work investigates how well characteristics of task structure can predict COI, as objectively measured by resumption lag. ... Our model can be expediently applied to many goal-directed tasks, allowing systems to make more effective decisions about when to interrupt.

2002

• (Monk et al., 2002) ⇒ Christopher A. Monk, Deborah A. Boehm-Davis, and J. Gregory Trafton. (2002). “The Attentional Costs of Interrupting Task Performance at Various Stages.” In: Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 46(22).
  • ABSTRACT: ... Results indicate that it does matter at which point the VCR task is interrupted in terms of time to resume the VCR task. ...

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