Liefooghe Baptist, Barrouillet Pierre, Vandierendonck André, Camos Valérie
Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2008 May;34(3):478-94. doi: 10.1037/0278-7393.34.3.478.
Although many accounts of task switching emphasize the importance of working memory as a substantial source of the switch cost, there is a lack of evidence demonstrating that task switching actually places additional demands on working memory. The present study addressed this issue by implementing task switching in continuous complex span tasks with strictly controlled time parameters. A series of 4 experiments demonstrate that recall performance decreased as a function of the number of task switches and that the concurrent load of item maintenance had no influence on task switching. These results indicate that task switching induces a cost on working memory functioning. Implications for theories of task switching, working memory, and resource sharing are addressed.
尽管许多关于任务切换的描述都强调工作记忆作为切换成本的一个重要来源的重要性，但缺乏证据表明任务切换实际上会对工作记忆提出额外要求。本研究通过在具有严格控制时间参数的连续复杂广度任务中实施任务切换来解决这个问题。一系列4个实验表明，回忆表现随着任务切换次数的增加而下降，并且项目维持的并发负荷对任务切换没有影响。这些结果表明任务切换会给工作记忆功能带来成本。文中还讨论了对任务切换、工作记忆和资源共享理论的启示。
