Attentional inertia and delayed orienting of spatial attention in task-switching.

Longman, Cai S.; Lavric, Aureliu; Munteanu, Cristian R.; Monsell, Stephen

doi:10.1037/a0036552

Cited by 39 publications

(146 citation statements)

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“…Lien et al (2010) found that an irrelevant stimulus presented shortly before stimulus onset captured attention only when its color was task-relevant, and that this contingent capture effect was uninfluenced by task switch/repeat, suggesting that task-set preparation during the interval was completely effective in reconfiguring the feature set and thus suppressing capture by the irrelevant color. Experiments in our lab (Longman, Lavric & Monsell, 2013;Longman, Lavric, Munteanu, & Monsell, 2014) have led to a different conclusion for spatial attention. Using tasks consistently associated with different spatial locations, and eye-tracking to index spatial attention, we found that task-switching induces both substantial delays in orienting appropriately, and a tendency to fixate the target location appropriate to the previous task, even with a generous interval for preparation.…”

Section: Other Evidence For Attentional Inertiamentioning

confidence: 99%

A change of task prolongs early processes: Evidence from ERPs in lexical tasks.

Elchlepp¹,

Lavric²,

Monsell³

2015

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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Switching tasks costs time. Allowing time to prepare reduces the cost, but usually leaves an irreducible "residual cost". Most accounts of this residual cost locate it within the responseselection stage of processing. To determine which processing stage is affected, we measured event-related potentials (ERPs) as participants performed a reading or a perceptual judgment task and examined the effect of a task-switch on early markers of lexical processing. A task cue preceding a string of blue and red letters instructed the participant either to read the letter string (for a semantic classification in Experiment 1, a lexical decision in Experiment 2), or to judge the symmetry of its color pattern. In Experiment 1, having to switch to the reading task delayed the evolution of the effect of word frequency on the reading task ERP by a substantial fraction of the effect on RT. In Experiment 2, a task switch delayed the onset of the effect of lexical status on the ERP to about the same extent that it prolonged the RT. These effects indicate an early locus of (most of) the residual switch cost: we propose that this reflects a form of task-related attentional inertia. Other findings have implications for the automaticity of lexical access: effects of frequency, lexicality and orthographic familiarity on ERPs in the symmetry task indicated involuntary but attenuated orthographic and lexical processing even when attention was focused on a non-lexical property. 3It is generally harder to switch among several cognitive tasks than to continue to perform just one. A popular way to capture at least part of this multitasking overhead in the laboratory is to conduct a reaction time (RT) experiment in which, on each of a series of trials, a stimulus is presented, and the participant must perform one of several possible tasks. On some trials the task changes, on others it does not, other things being equal. Several such "task-switching" paradigms have been developed and extensively explored over the last two decades. (For reviews see Kiesel, Steinhauser, Wendt, Falkenstein, Jost, Philipp, & Koch, 2010;Monsell, 2003;Vandierendonck, Liefooghe, & Verbruggen, 2010). The most obvious phenomenon they reveal is the substantial cost to performance of a switch of task: the average RT for a correct response is longer (and there are usually more errors) when the task changes than when it does not.The opportunity to prepare for a task before presentation of the stimulus generally reduces this switch cost, but does not eliminate it (Meiran, 1996;Rogers & Monsell, 1995). To manipulate preparation time unconfounded by the time elapsing since the previous performance of a task, task-cuing can be used (Meiran, 1996): each stimulus follows the previous response by a standard interval, and a task cue precedes the stimulus by an interval which is independently manipulated to vary preparation time. As the cue-stimulus interval (CSI) is increased from zero, the RT switch cost reduces to an asymptotic residual cost, usually reached at a CSI of bet...

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Section: Other Evidence For Attentional Inertiamentioning

confidence: 99%

A change of task prolongs early processes: Evidence from ERPs in lexical tasks.

Elchlepp¹,

Lavric²,

Monsell³

2015

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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“…Thus, cue availability during the CTI, cue status after target onset, or the combination of both attributes might have been responsible for the findings of Verbruggen et al (2007). However, their experiments do not allow one to distinguish between the potential effects of these attributes, and other studies have yielded inconclusive results.In some previous studies, residual switch costs have been observed when the cue was partially available during the CTI and remained absent after target onset (Lenartowicz, Yeung, & Cohen, 2011;Longman et al, 2014;Mayr, 2001;Steinhauser, Maier, & Hübner, 2007;Yamaguchi & Proctor, 2011), but they lacked typical cuing conditions for comparison. In other studies, residual switch costs have been observed when cue status after target onset was manipulated, with the cue always being available for the full CTI (Gotler & Meiran, 2001;Proctor, Koch, Vu, & Yamaguchi, 2008).…”

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“…First, it is common to present the cue before the target, with the time from cue onset to target onset referred to as the cue-target interval (CTI). Studies in which the CTI has been manipulated have revealed that response times (RTs) become shorter and switch costs decrease with longer CTIs (e.g., Monsell & Mizon, 2006;Schneider & Logan, 2011), although residual switch costs have been observed after CTIs of 1,000 ms or longer (e.g., Longman, Lavric, Munteanu, & Monsell, 2014;Meiran, 1996;Meiran et al, 2000). Second, the cue (often a visual stimulus) is typically available for the full CTI and remains present after target onset.…”

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Investigating a method for reducing residual switch costs in cued task switching

Schneider

2016

Mem Cogn

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Residual switch costs in cued task switching are performance decrements that occur despite a long cue-target interval (CTI) to prepare for a task switch. Verbruggen, Liefooghe, Vandierendonck, and Demanet (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 33; 342-356, 2007) showed that briefly presenting the cue during the CTI and leaving it absent after target onset yielded smaller residual switch costs than those obtained when the cue was available for the full CTI and remained present after target onset. The potential effects of cue availability during the CTI (full or partial) and cue status after target onset (present or absent) on residual switch costs were investigated in the present study. In Experiments 1 and 2, cue status was manipulated while holding cue availability constant. In Experiments 3 and 4, cue status and cue availability were manipulated factorially. Residual switch costs were obtained, but they were not modulated consistently by cue status or cue availability across experiments. In Experiment 5, a direct replication of one of Verbruggen and colleagues' experiments yielded divergent results. Implications for understanding task switching are discussed.Keywords Task switching . Residual switch cost . Task cuing . Cue availability . Cue absence Task switching is important in research on cognitive control because it highlights the capabilities and limitations of the cognitive system (Kiesel et al., 2010;Vandierendonck, Liefooghe, & Verbruggen, 2010). On the one hand, the cognitive system can perform different tasks in rapid succession. On the other hand, it is limited regarding how quickly and accurately task switching can be accomplished, as indicated by switch costs-worse performance for task switches than for task repetitions. This limitation is revealed especially by residual switch costs, which are performance decrements that sometimes occur despite a long time to prepare for a task switch (e.g., De Jong, 2000;Meiran, Chorev, & Sapir, 2000;Rogers & Monsell, 1995). The purpose of the present study was to investigate a method previously shown to reduce residual switch costs in cued task switching.On each trial of a cued task-switching experiment, a cue indicates the relevant task to perform on a target. For example, the cue odd-even might indicate that a target digit should be categorized as odd or even, whereas the cue small-large might indicate that the target should be categorized as smaller or larger than 5. Random selection of the cues produces different transitions across trials, with some trials being task switches (e.g., odd-even followed by small-large), and others being task repetitions (e.g., odd-even followed by odd-even). The performance difference between task switches and task repetitions is the switch cost.Two aspects of the typical cued task-switching procedure (see Meiran, 2014) are relevant for the present study. First, it is common to present the cue before the target, with the time from cue onset to target onset referred to as the cue-target...

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“…In the current Experiment 1, we modified Longman et al's (2014) task-switching conditions by introducing cues and instructions designed to prioritise shifting of the attentional component, and found that this appeared to decouple its reconfiguration from the rest of task set. In Experiment 2, we used (arbitrary) symbolic cues with the same instructions and training, and found that the pattern of data reverted to that suggesting largely integrated reconfiguration of the whole task-set.…”

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“…We took a situation where we already have evidence, from on-line measurement of direction of gaze, for strong coupling between reconfiguration of spatial attention and other components of task-set (Longman, Lavric, & Monsell, 2013;Longman, Lavric, Munteanu, & Monsell, 2014). …”

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confidence: 99%