Karatekin Canan, Couperus Jane W, Marcus David J
Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, USA.
Psychophysiology. 2004 Mar;41(2):175-85. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-8986.2004.00147.x.
We investigated attention allocation in a dual-task paradigm using behavioral and pupillary measures. We used an auditory digit span (DS) and a simple visual response time (RT) task. Participants were administered four conditions in which they performed neither task (no-task), a single task (DS or RT only), or both tasks (dual). Dependent variables were DS accuracy, RT, and task-evoked pupillary responses (TEPRs) to digits as estimates of mental effort. Participants maintained almost the same level of DS accuracy on dual as on DS only and sacrificed speed on the RT task. As expected, TEPRs increased linearly with memory load in both DS only and dual. Although TEPRs were initially higher in dual than in DS only, the slope of the increase was shallower in dual. Results suggest that TEPRs can elucidate mechanisms of attention allocation by distinguishing between effectiveness (level of behavioral performance) and efficiency (the costs of that performance in mental effort).
我们使用行为和瞳孔测量方法，在双任务范式中研究了注意力分配。我们采用了听觉数字广度（DS）和简单视觉反应时间（RT）任务。参与者接受了四种条件，即既不执行任务（无任务）、执行单一任务（仅DS或仅RT）或同时执行两项任务（双任务）。因变量包括DS准确性、RT以及对数字的任务诱发瞳孔反应（TEPRs），以此作为心理努力的估计指标。参与者在双任务条件下的DS准确性与仅执行DS任务时几乎保持相同水平，但在RT任务上牺牲了速度。正如预期的那样，仅DS任务和双任务条件下，TEPRs均随记忆负荷呈线性增加。尽管双任务条件下的TEPRs最初高于仅执行DS任务时，但双任务条件下增加的斜率更平缓。结果表明，TEPRs可以通过区分有效性（行为表现水平）和效率（该表现的心理努力成本）来阐明注意力分配机制。
