Institute of Psychology.
Human Technology Center.
J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 2019 Oct;45(10):1355-1374. doi: 10.1037/xhp0000677. Epub 2019 Jul 25.
Dual tasking is known to yield performance costs. Corresponding research has often focused on early or central task processing stages, that is, on features related to stimulus processing or response selection. Here, we demonstrate the important role of the final (late) stage of task processing by studying effects of effector system combinations. We used pairwise combinations of tasks requiring oculomotor, manual, vocal, and pedal responses, triggered by visual/auditory stimuli. Across task combinations, we compared dual-task costs among effector systems (e.g., oculomotor, vocal, and pedal) under controlled conditions, that is, when combined with the same "context effector" (e.g., manual) in the other task. The dual-task cost pattern was strongly determined by the particular combination of effector systems in line with the assumption of an ordinal effector-based prioritization pattern (oculomotor > pedal > vocal > manual), and could not be explained by classic "first-come, first-served" accounts of central processing. Stimulus modality and its mapping to effector systems affected reaction times (RTs), but the impact on the general prioritization scheme was negligible, suggesting a more substantial influence of output (compared with input) system characteristics on dual-task capacity scheduling. The results call for a distinct effector system weighting mechanism in models of dual-task control. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
双重任务已知会产生性能成本。相应的研究通常集中在早期或中央任务处理阶段，也就是说，集中在与刺激处理或反应选择相关的特征上。在这里，我们通过研究效应器系统组合的效果来证明任务处理的最后（晚期）阶段的重要作用。我们使用需要眼球运动、手动、发声和脚踏反应的任务的成对组合，由视觉/听觉刺激触发。在任务组合中，我们在受控条件下（即在另一个任务中与相同的“上下文效应器”（例如手动）结合使用时）比较了效应器系统之间的双重任务成本。双重任务成本模式强烈取决于效应器系统的特定组合，符合基于阶序效应器的优先级模式的假设（眼球运动>脚踏>发声>手动），并且不能用经典的中央处理“先来先服务”解释。刺激模式及其与效应器系统的映射影响反应时间（RT），但对一般优先级计划的影响可以忽略不计，这表明输出（与输入相比）系统特征对双重任务能力调度的影响更大。结果呼吁在双重任务控制模型中采用独特的效应器系统加权机制。
