University of Bremen, Department of Psychology, Germany.
University of Bremen, Department of Psychology, Germany.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2021 Nov;221:103451. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2021.103451. Epub 2021 Dec 3.
A frequent observation in dual-tasking is that spatially or conceptually (in)compatible Task 2 response features can interfere with responses in Task 1 (backward crosstalk effect; BCE). Such between-task interference is, at least to some degree, under strategic control. It has been shown that the size of the BCE can be modulated by instructions, contextual regularities, recent experience of conflict, and motivational factors. Especially large temporal task overlap (i.e., short stimulus onset asynchrony, SOA) represents a condition of potentially high levels of between-task interference. Accordingly, Fischer and Dreisbach (2015) showed that specific stimuli, associated with mostly short SOAs, were able to reduce the size of the BCE. In the present study, we investigated whether a regular sequence of SOAs can also be used for contextual regulation of the BCE. In a dual-task with spatially (in)compatible hand- and foot-responses, we implemented a repeating sequence of three SOAs. If participants learned this sequence and used it for task shielding, the BCE should decrease over time in the sequence blocks, but should increase in a subsequent random block. However, this prediction was not supported in two experiments (N = 32 each). Instead, the size of the BCE was constant across all blocks (BFs < 1 for the respective interactions). This is an important result, as it points at the necessity to discover the appropriate conditions allowing implicit SOA sequence learning and to further investigate whether or how the resulting implicit sequence knowledge can serve shielding against between-task interference.
在双任务中经常观察到，空间上或概念上（不）兼容的任务 2 响应特征会干扰任务 1 的响应（后向串扰效应；BCE）。这种任务间干扰至少在一定程度上受到策略控制。已经表明，BCE 的大小可以通过指令、上下文规则、最近的冲突体验和动机因素来调节。特别是大的时间任务重叠（即短的刺激起始间隔，SOA）代表了潜在高任务间干扰水平的条件。因此，Fischer 和 Dreisbach（2015 年）表明，与短 SOA 相关的特定刺激能够减小 BCE 的大小。在本研究中，我们研究了重复的 SOA 序列是否也可用于 BCE 的上下文调节。在涉及空间（不）兼容手和脚反应的双任务中，我们实现了三个 SOA 的重复序列。如果参与者学习了这个序列并将其用于任务屏蔽，那么 BCE 应该会随着时间的推移在序列块中减少，但在随后的随机块中会增加。然而，这一预测在两个实验中都没有得到支持（N=32 个实验）。相反，BCE 的大小在所有块中都是恒定的（各自交互作用的 BF<1）。这是一个重要的结果，因为它指出了需要发现允许隐式 SOA 序列学习的适当条件，并进一步研究由此产生的隐式序列知识如何或是否可以用于屏蔽任务间干扰。
