Shifting between mental sets: An individual differences approach to commonalities and differences of task switching components.

Abstract

Switching between mental sets has been extensively investigated in both experimental and individual differences research using a wide range of task-switch paradigms. However, it is yet unclear whether these different tasks measure a unitary shifting ability or reflect different facets thereof. In this study, 20 task pairs were administered to 119 young adults to assess 5 proposed components of mental set shifting: switching between judgments, stimulus dimensions, stimulus-response mappings, response sets, and stimulus sets. Modeling latent factors for each of the components revealed that a model with 5 separate yet mostly correlated factors fit the data best. In this model, the components most strongly related to the other latent factors were stimulus-response mapping shifting and, to a lesser degree, response set shifting. In addition, both factors were statistically indistinguishable from a second-order general shifting factor. In contrast, shifting between judgments as well as stimulus dimensions consistently required separate factors and could, hence, not fully be accounted for by the general shifting factor. Finally, shifting between stimulus sets was unrelated to any other shifting component but mapping shifting. We conclude that tasks assessing shifting between mappings are most adequate to assess general shifting ability. In contrast, shifting between stimulus sets (e.g., as in the Trail Making Test) probably reflects shifts in visual attention rather than executive shifting ability.Keywords: task switching, individual differences, executive functions, unity and diversity Supplemental materials: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000333.supp It is common experience that we rarely focus on only one activity at the time uninterruptedly. Rather, most of our daily life involves several things going on in quick succession or even concurrently. For example, while driving a car, we may simultaneously listen to music, quickly shift our attention from the street to the navigation system, and back on the road in an attempt to orient in an unfamiliar city. The mental processes behind such task switching and multitasking are obviously complex and have been one of the main topics in cognitive research of the last decades. Terms as, for instance, executive functions, cognitive control, or mental flexibility have been used to refer to the set of "shifting abilities" required in such situations, and many different paradigms have been developed to experimentally investigate these skills (e.g., Logan, 1985;Pashler, 2000).Set shifting abilities have also been of central interest in individual differences studies and studies on so-called frontal-lobe functions (e.g., Alvarez & Emory, 2006;Miyake et al., 2000). In these contexts, tasks have frequently been used that already have a long tradition in the assessment of frontal-executive functioning such as the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) and its derivatives, or the Trail Making Test (TMT).In the present study, we try to bridge the two fields by using an individual differences...

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