Task-switching and long-term priming: Role of episodic stimulus–task bindings in task-shift costs

Waszak, Florian; Hommel, Bernhard; Allport, Alan

doi:10.1016/s0010-0285(02)00520-0

Cited by 537 publications

(688 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…This result was later replicated by Spector and Biederman (1976) and by Allport et al (1994, Experiment 4). An even stronger result was recently found by Waszak, Hommel, and Allport (2003;cf. Allport & Wylie, 2000).…”

Section: Experiments 1: Task Ambiguitymentioning

confidence: 52%

“…If that value is also one that appeared in the other task, then this condition is a bivalent one. However, if the value never appeared in the other task, then this condition is not bivalent because the stimulus could not be bound with that task (Waszak et al, 2003), and it could not prime a competing response. In our experiment, all target stimuli contained two dimensions (color and shape), each relevant for only one of the tasks.…”

Section: Experiments 1: Task Ambiguitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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On the Origins of the Task Mixing Cost in the Cuing Task-Switching Paradigm.

Rubin¹,

Meiran²

2005

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

246

308

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Poorer performance in conditions involving task repetition within blocks of mixed tasks relative to task repetition within blocks of single task is called mixing cost (MC). In 2 experiments exploring 2 hypotheses regarding the origins of MC, participants either switched between cued shape and color tasks, or they performed them as single tasks. Experiment 1 supported the hypothesis that mixed-tasks trials require the resolution of task ambiguity by showing that MC existed only with ambiguous stimuli that afforded both tasks and not with unambiguous stimuli affording only 1 task. Experiment 2 failed to support the hypothesis that holding multiple task sets in working memory (WM) generates MC by showing that systematic manipulation of the number of stimulus-response rules in WM did not affect MC. The results emphasize the role of competition management between task sets during task control.Keywords: task switching, switching cost, mixing cost, task ambiguity, working memory One of the prominent questions in psychological research concerns behavior control. Whereas the behaviorists' tradition has ascribed most behavioral control to the environment, recent cognitive theorists have emphasized more internally driven, top-down forms of control. This idea of cognitive control involves concepts such as goal-directed behavior, initiation, executive control processes, and so forth. A key concept in the context of top-down control is the task-set. According to Rogers and Monsell (1995), the control of task-sets is manifested in the ability to configure processing resources to perform one rather than another of the many cognitive tasks that a stimulus affords.A common paradigm for studying task-set control is the taskswitching paradigm. In the original version of this paradigm, performance in blocks of trials in which a task is repeated is compared with performance in blocks in which the participants switch between two different tasks (Allport, Styles, & Hsieh, 1994;Jersild, 1927;Spector & Biederman, 1976). More recent studies have used a modified paradigm that makes it possible to contrast task-switch trials and task-repetition trials within blocks of mixed tasks (e.g., De Jong, 1995bGoschke, 2000;Mayr & Keele, 2000;Meiran, 1996;Rogers & Monsell, 1995). In most cases, switching tasks is accompanied by a robust performance cost, seen both in reaction time (RT) and error rates, indicating switch cost.A recent conceptualization that incorporates knowledge from the variety of task-switching paradigms elaborates and sharpens the understanding of the switch mechanisms by differentiating between several cost components. The difference in performance between switch and repetition trials (in mixed-tasks blocks) is termed switching cost, and the difference between repetition trials (in mixed-tasks blocks) and single-task trials (in pure blocks) is termed mixing cost (

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Section: Experiments 1: Task Ambiguitymentioning

confidence: 52%

Section: Experiments 1: Task Ambiguitymentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Origins of the Task Mixing Cost in the Cuing Task-Switching Paradigm.

Rubin¹,

Meiran²

2005

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

246

308

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…When it was found (Meiran, 1996;Rogers & Monsell, 1995) that the (mean) switch cost seemed to have two components -one eliminable by active preparation, one not -the idea of passive "inertia" seemed appropriate to account for the latter -the residual cost. Allport et al (1994) initially conceived of task-set inertia as having a persistence of the order of minutes, but such long-term effects of prior encounters (Allport & Wylie, 2000) seem better dealt with by associative activation of task-sets by stimuli, as later proposed by Waszak, Hommel and Allport (2003) and discussed below.…”

Section: Theories Of the (Residual) Task-switch Cost And Its Locusmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While these accounts do not all logically require that the locus of the residual cost is response-selection, that seems to have been the default assumption (e.g., Allport et al, 1994;Meiran, 2000;Waszak et al, 2003;Yeung & Monsell, 2003), and a late locus appears to be intrinsic to the Schuch and Koch (2003) account. We used event-related potentials to localize the effect of a task-switch within the latent interval.…”

Section: Theories Of the (Residual) Task-switch Cost And Its Locusmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The main puzzle is that long preparation intervals, which should allow multiple attempts to engage the task-set, still leave a residual cost in highly motivated participants. For present purposes, De Jong's account is a late -response-selection -locus of the residual cost, although in principle any component of task-set could fail to engage.Thus far, we have reviewed a number of accounts of the residual cost of a task-switch, of which the most popular is some form of task-set inertia, whether persisting activation or 12 persisting inhibition, or both, possibly coupled with associative reactivation of the task-set (Waszak et al, 2003). While these accounts do not all logically require that the locus of the residual cost is response-selection, that seems to have been the default assumption (e.g., Allport et al, 1994;Meiran, 2000;Waszak et al, 2003;Yeung & Monsell, 2003), and a late locus appears to be intrinsic to the Schuch and Koch (2003) account.…”

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confidence: 99%

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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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Selection and Control of Action

Proctor

2012

Handbook of Human Factors and Ergonomics

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Task-switching and long-term priming: Role of episodic stimulus–task bindings in task-shift costs

Cited by 537 publications

References 46 publications

On the Origins of the Task Mixing Cost in the Cuing Task-Switching Paradigm.

On the Origins of the Task Mixing Cost in the Cuing Task-Switching Paradigm.

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

Selection and Control of Action

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