Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Notifications convey important information, but they can also act as distractions, leading to resumption errors. Previous research has primarily focused on two types of notifications: pop-up notifications that appear quickly (1 second) and transparency reduction notifications that appear slowly (2 seconds). Pop-up notifications in an environment with perceptual feedback tend to result in the highest number of errors, while transparency reduction notifications may go unnoticed in an environment without feedback. To bridge this gap, the third variant of notification speed (1.5 seconds) was introduced in this study. The aim was to strike a balance between the noticeability of notification and minimizing the negative impact of attention redirection. Participants were instructed to perform the Modified Bourdon Test and close notifications. The findings revealed that the third variant, combining the features of pop-up and transparency reduction notifications, led to a decrease in resumption errors while still effectively capturing users' attention.