Mixing costs in task shifting reflect sequential processing stages in a multicomponent task

Steinhauser, Marco; Hübner, Ronald

doi:10.3758/bf03193380

Cited by 27 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…In trials of single-task blocks, no such decision process is required because of only one potential task. Note that this contrasts views of mixing costs associated with conflict resolution processes (Rubin & Meiran, 2005;Steinhauser & Hübner, 2005). These conflict resolution processes become necessary for bivalent stimuli potentially activating different response information; given that univalent stimuli were used in the present study we can control for a potential influence of conflict resolution processes on our findings.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 69%

Task switching: effects of practice on switch and mixing costs

Strobach

Liepelt

Schubert

et al. 2011

Psychological Research

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In the task-switching paradigm, mixing costs indicate the performance costs to mix two different tasks, while switch costs indicate the performance costs to switch between two sequentially presented tasks. Applying tasks with bivalent stimuli and responses, many studies demonstrated substantial mixing and switch costs and a reduction of these costs as a result of practice. The present study investigates whether extensive practice of a task-switching situation including tasks with univalent stimuli eliminates these costs. Participants practiced switching between a visual and an auditory task. These tasks were chosen because they had shown eliminated performance costs in a comparable dual-task practice study (Schumacher et al. Psychol Sci 12:101-108, 2001). Participants either performed the tasks with univalent responses (i.e., visualmanual and auditory-verbal stimulus-response mappings) or bivalent responses (i.e., visual-manual and auditorymanual stimulus-response mappings). Both valence conditions revealed substantial mixing and switch costs at the beginning of practice, yet, mixing costs were largely eliminated after eight practice sessions while switch costs were still existent.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 69%

Task switching: effects of practice on switch and mixing costs

Strobach

Liepelt

Schubert

et al. 2011

Psychological Research

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“…In addition, w e also e xamined the main effect of the shift conditions (i.e., the shift cost) and the mixing conditions (i.e., the mixing cost). However, a more detailed discussion of these ef fects in the present paradigm can be found in Hübner et a l. (2001) and Steinhauser and Hübner (2005).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the present e xperiments, we applied a paradigm in which two task components, judgment type and le vel of the target stimulus, v aried independently (Hübner, Futterer, & Steinhauser, 2001;Steinhauser & Hübner, 2005). Subjects had to switch between two judgment types-for instance, between a letter judgment (v owel/consonant) and a parity judgment (odd/e ven).…”

Section: Experimental Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automatic activation of task-related representations in task shifting

Steinhauser

Hübner

2007

Memory & Cognition

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Stimulus displays consisting of a target and a distractor can produce task conflicts when target and distractor are associated with different tasks. The present study examined whether these stimulus-induced task conflicts are affected by priming the irrelevant task or by increasing the salience of the distractor. In a series of three experiments, we employed a task-shifting paradigm in which subjects had to apply one of two judgments to either the global or the local le vel of a hierarchical stimulus. In each b lock, the tar get level and the judgment w ere either constant or mixed. Stimulus-induced judgment conflicts were measured by comparing performance for stimuli associated with two judgments and stimuli associated with only one. It turned out that only mixing the target level and not mixing the judgment increased the conflicts. These findings indicate that only the salience of the distractor modulates stimulus-induced conflicts.

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“…4 This might be analogous to ''mixing costs" in multitasks paradigms. In task switching paradigms, analyses show (Mayr, 2001;Steinhauser & Hübner, 2005) that there are costs for preparing for more than one task, independently from costs for switching between tasks. In our study, each composite trial requires participants to prepare for two sub-tasks, and this happens to be an effortful process that cannot be performed perfectly.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The cognitive architecture for chaining of two mental operations

Sackur

Dehaene

2009

Cognition

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a b s t r a c tA simple view, which dates back to Turing, proposes that complex cognitive operations are composed of serially arranged elementary operations, each passing intermediate results to the next. However, whether and how such serial processing is achieved with a brain composed of massively parallel processors, remains an open question. Here, we study the cognitive architecture for chained operations with an elementary arithmetic algorithm: we required participants to add (or subtract) two to a digit, and then compare the result with five. In four experiments, we probed the internal implementation of this task with chronometric analysis, the cued-response method, the priming method, and a subliminal forcedchoice procedure. We found evidence for an approximately sequential processing, with an important qualification: the second operation in the algorithm appears to start before completion of the first operation. Furthermore, initially the second operation takes as input the stimulus number rather than the output of the first operation. Thus, operations that should be processed serially are in fact executed partially in parallel. Furthermore, although each elementary operation can proceed subliminally, their chaining does not occur in the absence of conscious perception. Overall, the results suggest that chaining is slow, effortful, imperfect (resulting partly in parallel rather than serial execution) and dependent on conscious control.

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Mixing costs in task shifting reflect sequential processing stages in a multicomponent task

Cited by 27 publications

References 24 publications

Task switching: effects of practice on switch and mixing costs

Task switching: effects of practice on switch and mixing costs

Automatic activation of task-related representations in task shifting

The cognitive architecture for chaining of two mental operations

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