Faculty of Arts, 415316Laurentian University, Sudbury, ON, Canada.
Faculty of Health and Education, 157219Laurentian University, Sudbury, ON, Canada.
Percept Mot Skills. 2022 Jun;129(3):378-398. doi: 10.1177/00315125221076440. Epub 2022 Mar 22.
In the Sternberg item recognition task and its variants, an individual's mean reaction time increases with the number of items to be retained in the memory set. An increase in reaction time has also been seen when a secondary task was added. The usual interpretation for this increased reaction time is that adding cognitive load makes tasks more difficult. In a series of three experiments, we manipulated cognitive load through increases in the memory set or through a second task. In each experiment, high cognitive load was associated with higher mean response times but a reduced slope, based on the target position in a series of probes. Thus, in a Sternberg task with multiple word targets and multiple word probes, participants searched more efficiently per probe under high load than under low load. This pattern was replicated with the addition of a working memory task requiring participants to calculate a cumulative price based on the price per target word item. By considering both initial response times and reaction time slopes in large memory sets, this study provides a challenge to the traditional interpretation of cognitive load effects on search performance.
在斯滕伯格项目识别任务及其变体中，个体的平均反应时间随着需要在记忆集中保留的项目数量的增加而增加。当添加次要任务时，反应时间也会增加。对于这种反应时间的增加，通常的解释是增加认知负荷会使任务更加困难。在一系列三项实验中，我们通过增加记忆集或通过第二个任务来操纵认知负荷。在每个实验中，高认知负荷与更高的平均响应时间相关，但斜率降低，这是基于一系列探针中的目标位置。因此，在具有多个单词目标和多个单词探针的斯滕伯格任务中，参与者在高负载下每个探针的搜索效率更高，而在低负载下则更低。当添加需要参与者根据每个目标单词项的价格计算累积价格的工作记忆任务时，该模式得到了复制。通过考虑大记忆集中的初始响应时间和反应时间斜率，本研究对认知负荷对搜索性能的影响的传统解释提出了挑战。
