Departament de Tecnologies de la Informació i les Comunicacions, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain.
Biol Psychol. 2011 Mar;86(3):210-8. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2010.12.001. Epub 2010 Dec 16.
The goal of the study was to explore the time-course of the asymmetrical "local" switch cost observed in task switching. We investigated event-related potentials induced by cue and target processing when participants were engaged in a card-sorting switching task. Participants were instructed to match each card (target) following one of two possible task rules, the color or the form. The correct task rule changed unpredictably after a variable number of trials, and was signalled by cues indicating to switch or repeat the previous task rule. We observed that transition type (switch versus repeat) and task rule (color versus form) influenced both cue and target processing. Interestingly, the interaction between transition type and task rule, indicating an asymmetry in the local switch cost, affected the brain responses during target processing but not during cue processing. These results suggest that the asymmetry in the local switch cost relates to task execution processes.
本研究旨在探索任务转换中观察到的非对称“局部”转换代价的时程。我们在被试进行卡片分类转换任务时，记录了由线索和目标处理引发的事件相关电位。要求被试根据两种可能的任务规则（颜色或形状）匹配每张卡片（目标）。在经过可变数量的试验后，正确的任务规则会不可预测地改变，并通过提示来指示转换或重复之前的任务规则。我们观察到，转换类型（转换与重复）和任务规则（颜色与形状）都影响线索和目标的处理。有趣的是，转换类型和任务规则之间的相互作用（即局部转换代价的不对称性）影响了目标处理过程中的大脑反应，但不影响线索处理过程中的大脑反应。这些结果表明，局部转换代价的不对称性与任务执行过程有关。
