Koch Iring, Rumiati Raffaella I
Arbeitsbereich Psychologie, Max-Planck-Institut für Kognitions- und Neurowissenschaften, Amalienstrasse 33, 80799, München, Germany.
Psychol Res. 2006 Nov;70(6):448-58. doi: 10.1007/s00426-005-0020-8. Epub 2005 Oct 8.
Three dual-task experiments examined the influence of processing a briefly presented visual object for deferred verbal report on performance in an unrelated auditory-manual reaction time (RT) task. RT was increased at short stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs) relative to long SOAs, showing that memory consolidation processes can produce a functional processing bottleneck in dual-task performance. In addition, the experiments manipulated the spatial compatibility of the orientation of the visual object and the side of the speeded manual response. This cross-task compatibility produced relative RT benefits only when the instruction for the visual task emphasized overlap at the level of response codes across the task sets (Experiment 1). However, once the effective task set was in place, it continued to produce cross-task compatibility effects even in single-task situations ("ignore" trials in Experiment 2) and when instructions for the visual task did not explicitly require spatial coding of object orientation (Experiment 3). Taken together, the data suggest a considerable degree of task-set inertia in dual-task performance, which is also reinforced by finding costs of switching task sequences (e.g., AC --> BC vs. BC --> BC) in Experiment 3.
三项双重任务实验研究了对一个短暂呈现的视觉对象进行延迟言语报告的加工过程对一项不相关的听觉-手动反应时（RT）任务表现的影响。与长刺激开始时间间隔（SOA）相比，在短SOA时RT增加，这表明记忆巩固过程会在双重任务表现中产生功能性加工瓶颈。此外，实验操纵了视觉对象方向与快速手动反应一侧的空间兼容性。只有当视觉任务的指令强调跨任务集在反应编码层面的重叠时（实验1），这种跨任务兼容性才会产生相对的RT优势。然而，一旦有效的任务集就位，即使在单任务情境中（实验2中的“忽略”试验）以及视觉任务的指令未明确要求对对象方向进行空间编码时（实验3），它仍会继续产生跨任务兼容性效应。综合来看，数据表明双重任务表现中存在相当程度的任务集惯性，实验3中发现切换任务序列（例如AC --> BC与BC --> BC）的代价也强化了这一点。
