Richardson Benjamin, Pfister Roland, Fournier Lisa R
Department of Psychology, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA.
Department of Psychology III, University of Würzburg, Röntgenring 11, 97070, Würzburg, Germany.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2020 Jul;82(5):2516-2530. doi: 10.3758/s13414-020-01986-4.
We examined two questions regarding the interplay of planned and ongoing actions. First: Do endogenous (free-choice) and exogenous (forced-choice) triggers of action plans activate similar cognitive representations? And, second: Are free-choice decisions biased by future action goals retained in working memory? Participants planned and retained a forced-choice action to one visual event (A) while executing an immediate forced-choice or free-choice action (action B) to a second visual event (B); then the retained action (A) was executed. We found performance costs for action B if the two action plans partly overlapped versus did not overlap (partial repetition costs). This held true even when action B required a free-choice response indicating that forced-choice and free-choice actions are represented similarly. Partial repetition costs for free-choice actions were evident regardless of whether participants did or did not show free-choice response biases. Also, a subset of participants showed a bias to freely choose actions that did not overlap (vs. did overlap) with the action plan retained in memory, which led to improved performance in executing action B and recalling action A. Because cognitive effort is likely required to resolve feature code competition and confusion assumed to underlie partial repetition costs, this free-choice decision bias may serve to conserve cognitive effort and preserve the future action goal retained in working memory.
我们研究了两个关于计划行动与正在进行的行动之间相互作用的问题。第一：行动计划的内源性（自由选择）和外源性（强制选择）触发因素是否会激活相似的认知表征？第二：自由选择决策是否会受到工作记忆中保留的未来行动目标的影响？参与者对一个视觉事件（A）计划并保留一个强制选择行动，同时对第二个视觉事件（B）执行即时强制选择或自由选择行动（行动B）；然后执行保留的行动（A）。我们发现，如果两个行动计划部分重叠而非不重叠，行动B会出现执行成本（部分重复成本）。即使行动B需要自由选择反应，情况也是如此，这表明强制选择行动和自由选择行动的表征方式相似。无论参与者是否表现出自由选择反应偏差，自由选择行动的部分重复成本都很明显。此外，一部分参与者表现出一种偏向，即自由选择与记忆中保留的行动计划不重叠（而非重叠）的行动，这导致在执行行动B和回忆行动A时表现有所提高。由于解决部分重复成本背后假设的特征代码竞争和混淆可能需要认知努力，这种自由选择决策偏差可能有助于节省认知努力，并保留工作记忆中保留的未来行动目标。
