Department of Psychology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 84105, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
Psychol Res. 2010 Nov;74(6):568-78. doi: 10.1007/s00426-010-0279-2. Epub 2010 Mar 23.
A part of action preparation is deciding what the relevant task is. This task-decision process is conceptually separate from response selection. To show this, the authors manipulated task conflict in a spatial task-switching paradigm, using conflict stimuli that appeared during trials with univalent targets (affording 1 task). The conflict stimuli afforded task identity because they were used as task cues with bivalent targets (affording 2 tasks) that were intermixed with the univalent targets. Thus, for univalent targets, irrelevant stimuli either caused low task conflict or high task conflict. In three experiments, the authors found poorer performance in high task conflict trials than in low task conflict trials. Task conflict was introduced during target appearance (Experiment 1) or task preparation (Experiments 2 and 3). In the latter case, the task conflict effect decreased with increasing task preparation time showing that task preparation involves task decision.
动作准备的一部分是确定相关任务是什么。这个任务决策过程在概念上与反应选择是分开的。为了证明这一点，作者在空间任务转换范式中操纵了任务冲突，使用冲突刺激在具有单一价值目标的试验中出现（提供 1 项任务）。冲突刺激提供了任务身份，因为它们与具有双重价值目标的任务线索一起使用（提供 2 项任务），双重价值目标与单一价值目标混合出现。因此，对于单一价值目标，无关刺激要么导致低任务冲突，要么导致高任务冲突。在三个实验中，作者发现高任务冲突试验的表现比低任务冲突试验差。任务冲突在目标出现时（实验 1）或任务准备时（实验 2 和 3）引入。在后一种情况下，随着任务准备时间的增加，任务冲突效应减小，表明任务准备涉及任务决策。
