Hosang Thomas J, Fischer Rico, Pomp Jennifer, Liepelt Roman
Department of Performance Psychology, Institute of Psychology, German Sport University Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
Experimental Psychology Unit, Department of Psychology, Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2018 Nov 6;9:1942. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01942. eCollection 2018.
Two decades of research indicate that visual processing is typically enhanced for items that are in the space near the hands (near-hand space). Enhanced attention and cognitive control have been thought to be responsible for the observed effects, amongst others. As accumulating experimental evidence and recent theories of dual-tasking suggest an involvement of cognitive control and attentional processes during dual tasking, dual-task performance may be modulated in the near-hand space. Therefore, we performed a series of three experiments that aimed to test if the near-hand space affects the shift between task-component processing in two visual-manual tasks. We applied a Psychological Refractory Period Paradigm (PRP) with varying stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) and manipulated stimulus-hand proximity by placing hands either on the side of a computer screen (near-hand condition) or on the lap (far-hand condition). In Experiment 1, Task 1 was a number categorization task (odd vs. even) and Task 2 was a letter categorization task (vowel vs. consonant). Stimulus presentation was spatially segregated with Stimulus 1 presented on the right side of the screen, appearing first and then Stimulus 2, presented on the left side of the screen, appearing second. In Experiment 2, we replaced Task 2 with a color categorization task (orange vs. blue). In Experiment 3, Stimulus 1 and Stimulus 2 were centrally presented as a single bivalent stimulus. The classic PRP effect was shown in all three experiments, with Task 2 performance declining at short SOA while Task 1 performance being relatively unaffected by task-overlap. In none of the three experiments did stimulus-hand proximity affect the size of the PRP effect. Our results indicate that the switching operation between two tasks in the PRP paradigm is neither optimized nor disturbed by being processed in near-hand space.
二十年的研究表明，对于手部附近空间（近手空间）中的物体，视觉处理能力通常会得到增强。人们认为，增强的注意力和认知控制等因素是造成这种观察结果的原因。随着越来越多的实验证据以及最近的双任务理论表明，在双任务过程中认知控制和注意力过程会参与其中，双任务表现可能会在近手空间中受到调节。因此，我们进行了一系列三个实验，旨在测试近手空间是否会影响两个视觉手动任务中任务组件处理之间的转换。我们应用了具有不同刺激起始异步性（SOA）的心理不应期范式（PRP），并通过将手放在电脑屏幕一侧（近手条件）或膝盖上（远手条件）来操纵刺激与手的接近程度。在实验1中，任务1是数字分类任务（奇数与偶数），任务2是字母分类任务（元音与辅音）。刺激呈现是空间分离的，刺激1出现在屏幕右侧，先出现，然后刺激2出现在屏幕左侧，后出现。在实验2中，我们将任务2替换为颜色分类任务（橙色与蓝色）。在实验3中，刺激1和刺激2作为单个二价刺激集中呈现。在所有三个实验中都出现了经典的PRP效应，在短SOA时任务2的表现下降，而任务1的表现相对不受任务重叠的影响。在这三个实验中，刺激与手的接近程度均未影响PRP效应的大小。我们的结果表明，PRP范式中两个任务之间的切换操作在近手空间中进行处理时既未得到优化也未受到干扰。
