Lien Mei-Ching, Schweickert Richard, Proctor Robert W
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California 94035, USA.
J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 2003 Jun;29(3):692-712. doi: 10.1037/0096-1523.29.3.692.
Three experiments examined the effects of task switching and response correspondence in a psychological refractory period paradigm. A letter task (vowel-consonant) and a digit task (odd-even) were combined to form 4 possible dual-task pairs in each trial: letter-letter, letter-digit, digit-digit, and digit-letter. Foreknowledge of task transition (repeat or switch) and task identity (letter or digit) was varied across experiments: no foreknowledge in Experiment 1, partial foreknowledge (task transition only) in Experiment 2, and full foreknowledge in Experiment 3. For all experiments, the switch cost for Task 2 was additive with stimulus onset asynchrony, and the response-correspondence effect for Task 2 was numerically smaller in the switch condition than in the repeat condition. These outcomes suggest that reconfiguration for Task 2 takes place after the central processing of Task 1 and that the crosstalk correspondence effect is due to response activation by way of stimulus-response associations.
