Janczyk Markus, Huestegge Lynn
Department of Psychology, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Schleichstraße 4, 72076, Tübingen, Germany.
Department of Psychology, Julius Maximilians University, Würzburg, Germany.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2017 Apr;79(3):796-806. doi: 10.3758/s13414-016-1257-6.
When two tasks are combined in a dual-task experiment, characteristics of Task 2 can influence Task 1 performance, a phenomenon termed the backward crosstalk effect (BCE). Besides instances depending on the (spatial) compatibility of both responses, a particularly interesting example was introduced by Miller (2006): If Task 2 was a no-go task (i.e., one not requiring any action at all), responses were slowed in Task 1. Subsequent work, however, also reported the opposite result-that is, faster Task 1 responses in cases of no-go Task 2 trials. We report three experiments aiming to more precisely identify the conditions under which a no-go Task 2 facilitates or impedes Task 1 performance. The results suggest that an adverse no-go BCE is only observed when the Task 2 response(s) are sufficiently prepared in advance, yielding strong inhibitory control demands for Task 2 that eventually hamper Task 1 processing as well (i.e., inhibitory costs). If this is not the case, encountering a no-go Task 2 trial facilitates Task 1 performance, suggesting that the underlying task representation is reduced to a single - task. These results are discussed in the context of other recent work on BCEs and of recently suggested accounts of the no-go BCE.
当在双任务实验中结合两项任务时，任务2的特征会影响任务1的表现，这种现象被称为反向串扰效应（BCE）。除了取决于两种反应（在空间上）兼容性的情况外，米勒（2006年）还引入了一个特别有趣的例子：如果任务2是一个停止任务（即完全不需要任何动作的任务），任务1中的反应就会变慢。然而，后续研究也报告了相反的结果——也就是说，在停止任务2试验的情况下，任务1的反应更快。我们报告了三个实验，旨在更精确地确定停止任务2促进或阻碍任务1表现的条件。结果表明，只有当任务2的反应提前得到充分准备时，才会观察到不利的停止BCE，这对任务2产生了强烈的抑制控制需求，最终也会阻碍任务1的处理（即抑制成本）。如果不是这种情况，遇到停止任务2试验会促进任务1的表现，这表明潜在的任务表征简化为单一任务。我们将在关于BCE的其他近期研究以及最近提出的停止BCE解释的背景下讨论这些结果。
