How do we compare the difficulty of different kinds of tasks, and how we do sequence tasks of different kinds when the basis for the ordering is the tasks’ difficulty levels? The ability to do these things requires a common currency, but the identity of that currency, if it exists, is unknown. We hypothesized that people may believe that the time that attention is paid to tasks enables people to compare and sequence tasks of different kinds. To evaluate this hypothesis, we tested three groups of participants. One group estimated the proportion of time that performance of a task requires attention—what we called attention time proportions or ATPs. We obtained ATPs for tasks that were “more intellectual” (counting) and others that were “more physical” (locomotion). Two additional groups made 2-alternative-forced-choice decisions about the relative ease and preferred sequencing of all possible pairs of tasks for which ATPs were independently obtained. We found that ATPs predicted judgments of task difficulty and preferred task order.

我们如何比较不同类型任务的难度，当排序的依据是任务的难度级别时，我们如何对不同类型的任务进行排序？做这些事情的能力需要一种共同的货币，但该货币的身份（如果存在）是未知的。我们假设人们可能认为，对任务的关注时间使人们能够比较和排序不同类型的任务。为了评估这个假设，我们测试了三组参与者。一组估计了执行一项任务需要注意力的时间比例——我们称之为注意力时间比例或 ATP。我们为“更多智力”（计数）和其他“更多体力”（运动）的任务获得了 ATP。另外两个小组对独立获得 ATP 的所有可能任务对的相对容易性和首选排序做出了 2-替代强制选择决定。我们发现 ATP 预测了对任务难度和首选任务顺序的判断。