Meiran Nachshon, Cohen-Kdoshay Oshrit
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2012 Feb;139(2):309-13. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2011.12.008. Epub 2012 Jan 12.
The prepared reflex (PR) metaphor (Exner, 1879; Woodworth, 1938) suggests that stimulus-response (S-R) instructions held in working memory (WM) can lead to autonomous response activation without any practice. Cohen-Kdoshay and Meiran (2007) showed flanker compatibility effects immediately following the instructions (First Trials Flanker Compatibility Effect, FTFCE) and also showed that FTFCE was eliminated when participants had to hold an additional novel task rule in mind. They attributed the elimination of the FTFCE to WM load, but did not rule out multitasking and associated increased control demands as a possible alternative explanation. In the present experiment, the authors compared a no-load condition, a load condition involving a secondary task that was changed in every block (thus requiring WM) and a multi-tasking condition involving a secondary that remained the same throughout the experiment. The results show FTFCE without load and in the multi-tasking condition but no FTFCE in the WM load condition, establishing the critical involvement of WM storage capacity in the FTFCE.
预编反射（PR）隐喻（埃克斯纳，1879年；伍德沃思，1938年）表明，工作记忆（WM）中保存的刺激-反应（S-R）指令可导致自主反应激活，而无需任何练习。科恩-科多沙伊和梅兰（2007年）在指令之后立即显示出侧翼兼容效应（首次试验侧翼兼容效应，FTFCE），并且还表明，当参与者必须记住另外一个新的任务规则时，FTFCE会消失。他们将FTFCE的消失归因于工作记忆负荷，但并未排除多任务处理以及相关的控制需求增加作为一种可能的替代解释。在本实验中，作者比较了无负荷条件、涉及在每个组块中变化的次要任务（因此需要工作记忆）的负荷条件以及涉及在整个实验中保持不变的次要任务的多任务条件。结果显示，在无负荷和多任务条件下存在FTFCE，但在工作记忆负荷条件下不存在FTFCE，这确立了工作记忆存储容量在FTFCE中的关键作用。
