Lauri Oksama^1,3 (), Niki Pennanen^2,3; ¹Finnish Defence Research Agency, ²Aalto University, Department of Computer Science, ³University of Turku, Department of Psychology and Speech-Language Pathology

Performing under pressure, particularly in multitasking environments, is a critical challenge in both everyday life and high-stakes professions. This study investigated the differential effects of monitoring and outcome pressure on time-sharing performance and allocation of visual attention. Using a within-subjects design, 30 participants completed a recently devised time-sharing task requiring prioritization under three different pressure conditions. We hypothesized that in a high-demand time-sharing environment, outcome pressure would impair task performance and visual sampling of subtasks more significantly than monitoring pressure. To investigate our hypotheses, we recorded participants’ task performance metrics and eye movements during the task. However, our confirmatory analyses found no evidence to support either of these hypotheses. In contrast to the hypotheses, our additional exploratory analyses revealed that monitoring pressure, rather than outcome pressure, led to a statistically significant decrease in task performance. Notably, this effect occurred without detectable changes in visual sampling. This unexpected finding is likely due to the high sensorimotor demands of the task, specifically the need for precise and rapid mouse movements, which may have been disrupted by the participants’ heightened self-consciousness under monitoring pressure. Our findings contribute to the growing body of literature on the differential effects of monitoring and outcome pressure, with potential implications for real-world settings. For instance, in professions requiring precise motor skills—such as surgery, piloting, or competitive sports—heightened self-consciousness under monitoring pressure may impair performance, even without affecting attentional control. Similarly, everyday activities like driving under observation (e.g., during driving tests) or performing in front of an audience may be adversely affected. Understanding how monitoring pressure disrupts performance in such scenarios can inform training and support strategies to mitigate its impact.