No evidence for the reduction of task competition and attentional adjustment during task-switching practice
Publication date
2020-02-18
Document type
Research article
Author
Organisational unit
Publisher
Elsevier
Series or journal
Acta psychologica
ISSN
Periodical volume
204
Article ID
103036
Peer-reviewed
✅
Part of the university bibliography
✅
Language
English
DDC Class
150 Psychologie
Keyword
Attentional adjustment
Cognitive training
Conflict processing
Practice
Task switching
Abstract
Performance in task switching experiments is worse when the current stimulus is associated with different responses in the two tasks (i.e., incongruent condition) than when it is associated with the same response (i.e., congruent condition). This congruency effect reflects some sort of application of the irrelevant task's stimulus-response translation rules. Manipulating the recency and the proportion of congruent and incongruent trials results in a modulation of the congruency effect (i.e., Congruency Sequence Effect, CSE, and Proportion Congruency Effect, PCE, respectively), suggesting attentional adjustment of processing weights. Here, we investigated the impact of task switching practice on the congruency effect and the modulation thereof by (a) re-analyzing the data of a task switching experiment involving six consecutive sessions and (b) conducting a novel four-session experiment in which the proportions of congruent and incongruent trials were manipulated. Although practice appeared to reduce the reaction times overall and the task switch costs (i.e., slower reaction times after task switches than after task repetitions) to an asymptotic level, the congruency effect as well as its modulations remained remarkably constant. These findings thus do not provide evidence that conflict effects between tasks and attentional adjustment are affected by task switching practice.
Version
Published version
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Open access