David is a fourth year doctoral student in the Human Factors and Applied Cognition program at George Mason University interested in interrupted task performance, multiple task management, and research methodology and statistics. David received his Bachelor of Science degree in Human Factors and Engineering Psychology from Tufts University in 2003.

Interrupted Task Performance

David is researching why and how interruptions are disruptive in dynamic environments with Dr. J. Gregory Trafton, Dr. Deborah A. Boehm-Davis, and Dr. Chris Monk. He is primarily interested in what aspects of interrupting tasks make them more or less disruptive, how people can be trained to deal with interruptions, and how people process interruptions in naturalistic environments. Additionally, he is currently examining how individual differences affect people's abilities to perform tasks with interruptions.

David is also working with Dr. Kara Latorella at NASA Langley Research Center through the Graduate Student Researchers Program Fellowship to investigate the role of interruptions on the flight deck.

Multiple Task Management

This line of research, with Dr. Deborah A. Boehm-Davis, is aimed at integrating findings from the fields of interruptions, dual-tasking, multi-tasking, and task switching in effort to further our understanding of, generally, how people handle multiple tasks. We are currently investigating differences in how people switch tasks based on whether or not the switch is voluntary.

Research Methodology and Statistics

Under the guidance of Dr. Patrick E. McKnight and the Measurement, Research Methodology, Evaluation, and Statistics (MRES) lab, David is exploring how Generalizability Theory (G-Theory) can be used to aid experimentalists in drawing stronger inferences from their findings. He is also pursuing how the Just Noticeable Difference measure can be appled to various fields to increase predicitve utility. Current work in this area is in developing predictive models of Major League Baseball outcomes.