Temporal discrimination of one’s own reaction times in dual-task performance: Context effects and methodological constraints

Self Cite

Being able to accumulate accurate information about one’s own performance is important in everyday contexts, and arguably particularly so in complex multitasking contexts. Thus, the observation of a glaring gap in participants’ introspection regarding their own reaction time costs in a concurrent dual-task context is deserving of closer examination. This so-called introspective blind spot has been explained by a ‘consciousness bottleneck’ which states that while attention is occupied by one task, participants cannot consciously perceive another stimulus presented in that time. In the current study, a series of introspective Psychological Refractory Period (PRP) experiments were conducted to identify the determinants of an introspective blind spot; to our surprise, in half of the experiments participants appeared to be aware of their dual-task costs. A single trial analysis highlighted the sensory modality of the two stimuli within the trial as an important predictor of introspective accuracy, along with temporal gaps in the trial. The current findings call into question the claim that attention is required for conscious awareness. We propose a memory-based account of introspective processes in this context, whereby introspective accuracy is determined by the memory systems involved in encoding and rehearsing memory traces. This model of the conditions required to build up accurate representations of our performance may have far-reaching consequences for monitoring and introspection across a range of tasks.

Section: Interim Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

The surprising role of stimulus modality in the dual-task introspective blind spot: a memory account

Bryce

Bratzke

2021

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“…Previous conceptualization of IRTs in dual tasks in light of the unified attentional bottleneck model imply that IRTs reflect relatively veridical time estimates of the consciously accessible internal processing times (Corallo et al, 2008;Marti et al, 2010). Others have proposed that introspective RTs in dual-task situations reflect retrospective inferences based on a variety of cues (Bratzke & Bryce, 2016Bratzke et al, 2014;; see also Klein & Stolz, 2018). In line with the latter assumption, one could argue that in the present study, participants inferred their IRTs from, for example, their experience of the between-trial sequence of R1-R2 compatibility or of the sequence of required and performed responses (e.g., 50% of compatible-compatible and incompatible-incompatible sequences include full response repetitions).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Numerous studies have demonstrated that introspection about dual-task costs is severely limited, since participants are usually not aware of the PRP effect (Bratzke & Bryce, 2016;Bratzke, Bryce, & Seifried-Dübon, 2014;Corallo, Sackur, Dehaene, & Sigman, 2008;Marti, Sackur, Sigman, Dehaene, 2010; for a diverging pattern regarding task switch costs, see Bratzke & Bryce, 2019). To assess people's introspection, most of these studies used the method of quantified introspection (Corallo et al, 2008), in which participants provide estimates of their RTs (introspective reaction times, IRTs) after each trial.…”

Section: Introspection About Backward Crosstalk In Dual-task Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

Introspection about backward crosstalk in dual-task performance

Bratzke

Janczyk

2020

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The present study investigated participants' ability to introspect about the effect of between-task crosstalk in dual tasks. In two experiments, participants performed a compatibility-based backward crosstalk dual task, and additionally provided estimates of their RTs (introspective reaction times, IRTs) after each trial (Experiment 1) or after each pair of prime and test trials (Experiment 2). In both experiments, the objective performance showed the typical backward crosstalk effect and its sequential modulation depending on compatibility in the previous trial. Very similar patterns were observed in IRTs, despite the typical unawareness of the PRP effect. In sum, these results demonstrate the reliability of between-task crosstalk in dual tasks and that people's introspection about the temporal processing demands in this complex dual-task situation is intriguingly accurate and severely limited at the same time.

“…According to the body of research on time expectancy, humans seem to represent time intervals not in an absolute but in a relative manner (Bausenhart, Bratzke, & Ulrich, 2016 ; Bratzke & Bryce, 2016 ; Los, Kruijne, & Meeter, 2017 ). Time expectancies are used to prepare for an upcoming task.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parallel and serial task processing in the PRP paradigm: a drift–diffusion model approach

Mattes

Tavera

Ophey

et al. 2020

Even after a long time of research on dual-tasking, the question whether the two tasks are always processed serially (response selection bottleneck models, RSB) or also in parallel (capacity-sharing models) is still going on. The first models postulate that the central processing stages of two tasks cannot overlap, producing a central processing bottleneck in Task 2. The second class of models posits that cognitive resources are shared between the central processing stages of two tasks, allowing for parallel processing. In a series of three experiments, we aimed at inducing parallel vs. serial processing by manipulating the relative frequency of short vs. long SOAs (Experiments 1 and 2) and including no-go trials in Task 2 (Experiment 3). Beyond the conventional response time (RT) analyses, we employed drift-diffusion model analyses to differentiate between parallel and serial processing. Even though our findings were rather consistent across the three experiments, they neither support unambiguously the assumptions derived from the RSB model nor those derived from capacity-sharing models. SOA frequency might lead to an adaptation to frequent time patterns. Overall, our diffusion model results and mean RTs seem to be better explained by participant's time expectancies.