PERSON
Sophie Leroy
French-American organizational psychologist whose 2009 discovery of attention residue identified the hidden cognitive cost of task-switching.
Sophie Leroy is an organizational psychologist, professor of management, and dean of the School of Business at the University of Washington Bothell. She earned her PhD from NYU Stern School of Business and is best known for her foundational research on attention residue — the phenomenon she identified and named in her 2009 paper 'Why Is It So Hard to Do My Work?' The research demonstrated that switching between tasks leaves measurable cognitive traces that degrade performance on subsequent work, even when the person is unaware of the impairment. Her experimental paradigm isolated task-switching as the mechanism, controlled for fatigue and motivation, and showed that the effect is robust across task types and populations. Her findings — amplified by Cal Newport and others — have become central to discussions of deep work, knowledge-worker productivity, and workplace design. In 2025, Leroy launched an AI-focused speaker series at UW Bothell, turning her attention to how artificial intelligence reshapes cognitive demands.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Leroy's 2009 paper originated from observational puzzles in workplace psychology: knowledge workers consistently