AI Article Synopsis
- The study investigated how task switching affects performance, particularly focusing on the concept of task inhibition when participants moved between three different tasks.
- It was found that switching back to a task that was just completed (n-2 task repetition) generally led to worse performance compared to switching to a new task, indicating that previous tasks can inhibit current task performance.
- Adjusting the timing of task cues and response cues influenced this inhibition, showing that better preparation and response time can help alleviate the negative effects of task inhibition.
Article Abstract
Task inhibition was explored in two experiments that employed a paradigm in which participants switched among three tasks. Two tasks required manual choice responses based on numerical judgment (parity or magnitude), whereas a third task required an unconditional double-press of both response keys. Both experiments showed that switching to a just-abandoned task (n-2 task repetition) generally leads to a performance cost relative to switching to another task. Specifically, this task inhibition effect also occurred for the double-press task, suggesting inhibition of response mode. Prolonging the task-cuing interval showed that advance task preparation reduced only inhibition of the double-press task but not of the choice tasks (Experiment 1). Prolonging the response-cue interval led to a decrease of the inhibition effect in all tasks (Experiment 2), suggesting a time-based release of task inhibition. Together, the experiments support the notion of a response-related component of task inhibition.
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| http://dx.doi.org/10.1027/1618-3169.51.1.52 | DOI Listing |
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