Human cognition is routinely challenged by today’s
multitasking demands which require continuous attentional
deployment to multiple task components in parallel. While
practice-based multitasking training has been shown to
improve multitasking performance, little is known about how
attention should be best deployed for optimal training. To this
end, we leveraged a large-scale dataset from an online
cognitive-training platform to investigate individual
differences in task learning across long-term training. We
developed an index of attentional deployment that specifies the
temporal dynamics of learning for each component of the
multitask and calculate distance maps between clusters of users
to specify distinct learning styles. While long-term practice
improved the multitasking performance of all participant
groups, participants who focused on learning one task
component earlier and more emphatically, benefited from
superior learning gains throughout the entirety of training.