Monno Irina, Spitzer Markus, Miller Jeff, Dignath David, Kiesel Andrea
University of Freiburg, DE.
University of Otago, NZ.
J Cogn. 2021 Jan 18;4(1):8. doi: 10.5334/joc.137.
Previous studies on voluntary task switching using the self-organized task switching paradigm suggest that task performance and task selection in multitasking are related. When deciding between two tasks, the stimulus associated with a task repetition occurred with a stimulus onset asynchrony () that continuously increased with the number of repetitions, while the stimulus associated with a task switch was immediately available. Thus, the waiting time for the repetition stimulus increased with number of consecutive task repetitions. Two main results were shown: first, switch costs and voluntary switch rates correlated negatively - the smaller the switch costs, the larger the switch rates. Second, participants switched tasks when switch costs and waiting time for the repetition stimulus were similar. In the present study, we varied the SOA that increased with number of task repetitions () and also varied the size of the switch costs by varying the intertrial interval. We examined which combination of SOA increment and switch costs maximizes participants' attempts to balance waiting time and switch costs in self-organized task switching. We found that small SOA increments allow for fine-grained adaptation and that participants can best balance their switch costs and waiting times in settings with medium switch costs and small SOA increments. In addition, correlational analyses indicate relations between individual switch costs and individual switch rates across participants.
以往使用自组织任务切换范式对自愿任务切换的研究表明，多任务处理中的任务表现和任务选择是相关的。在两项任务之间做出决定时，与任务重复相关的刺激会随着刺激开始异步（SOA）出现，且SOA会随着重复次数不断增加，而与任务切换相关的刺激则可立即获得。因此，重复刺激的等待时间会随着连续任务重复次数的增加而增加。研究显示了两个主要结果：第一，切换成本与自愿切换率呈负相关——切换成本越小，切换率越大。第二，当切换成本和重复刺激的等待时间相似时，参与者会切换任务。在本研究中，我们改变了随任务重复次数增加的SOA，并通过改变试次间隔来改变切换成本的大小。我们研究了SOA增量和切换成本的哪种组合能使参与者在自组织任务切换中平衡等待时间和切换成本的尝试最大化。我们发现，较小的SOA增量允许进行细粒度的适应，并且参与者在中等切换成本和较小SOA增量的设置中能够最佳地平衡他们的切换成本和等待时间。此外，相关性分析表明了参与者之间个体切换成本和个体切换率之间的关系。
