Heathcote Andrew, Coleman James R, Eidels Ami, Watson Jason M, Houpt Joseph, Strayer David L
Schools of Medicine and Psychology, Universitys of Tasmania and Newcastle, Sandy Bay, Tasmania, 7005, Australia.
Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
Mem Cognit. 2015 Oct;43(7):973-89. doi: 10.3758/s13421-015-0526-2.
We examined the role of dual-task interference in working memory using a novel dual two-back task that requires a redundant-target response (i.e., a response that neither the auditory nor the visual stimulus occurred two back versus a response that one or both occurred two back) on every trial. Comparisons with performance on single two-back trials (i.e., with only auditory or only visual stimuli) showed that dual-task demands reduced both speed and accuracy. Our task design enabled a novel application of Townsend and Nozawa's (Journal of Mathematical Psychology 39: 321-359, 1995) workload capacity measure, which revealed that the decrement in dual two-back performance was mediated by the sharing of a limited amount of processing capacity. Relative to most other single and dual n-back tasks, performance measures for our task were more reliable, due to the use of a small stimulus set that induced a high and constant level of proactive interference. For a version of our dual two-back task that minimized response bias, accuracy was also more strongly correlated with complex span than has been found for most other single and dual n-back tasks.
我们使用一种新颖的双重双背任务来研究双任务干扰在工作记忆中的作用，该任务在每次试验中都需要冗余目标反应（即，听觉和视觉刺激都未在两个试次前出现的反应与一个或两个刺激在两个试次前出现的反应）。与单双背试验（即仅使用听觉或仅使用视觉刺激）的表现进行比较表明，双任务要求降低了速度和准确性。我们的任务设计实现了汤森德和野泽（《数学心理学杂志》39：321 - 359，1995）工作量容量测量的一种新颖应用，该测量表明双重双背任务表现的下降是由有限处理能力的共享所介导的。相对于大多数其他单重和双重n背任务，我们任务的表现测量更可靠，这是因为使用了一个小的刺激集，该刺激集引发了高水平且恒定的前摄干扰。对于我们最小化反应偏差的双重双背任务版本，准确性与复杂广度的相关性也比大多数其他单重和双重n背任务更强。
