Gresch Daniela, Boettcher Sage E P, Nobre Anna C, van Ede Freek
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK; Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity, Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK; Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity, Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Cognition. 2022 Aug;225:105156. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105156. Epub 2022 May 7.
In everyday life, we often anticipate the timing of an upcoming task or event while actively engaging in another. Here, we investigated the effects of predictable temporal structure within such a multi-task scenario. In a visual working-memory task, we manipulated whether the onset of a working-memory probe could be predicted in time, while also embedding a simple intervening task within the delay period. We first show that working-memory performance benefitted from temporal expectations, even though an intervening task had to be completed in the interim. Moreover, temporal predictions regarding the upcoming working-memory probe additionally affected performance on the intervening task, resulting in faster responses when the memory probe was expected early, and slower responses when the memory probe was expected late, as compared to when it was temporally unpredictable. Because the intervening task always occurred at the same time during the memory delay, differences in performance on this intervening task result from a between-task consequence of temporal expectation. Thus, we show that within multi-task settings, knowing when working-memory contents will be required for an upcoming task not only facilitates performance of the associated working-memory task, but can also influence the performance of other, intervening tasks.
在日常生活中，我们经常在积极参与另一项活动时，预测即将到来的任务或事件的时间。在此，我们研究了在这种多任务场景中可预测的时间结构的影响。在一项视觉工作记忆任务中，我们操纵了工作记忆探针的开始时间是否可以被及时预测，同时在延迟期内嵌入了一个简单的中间任务。我们首先表明，即使在此期间必须完成一个中间任务，工作记忆表现也受益于时间预期。此外，关于即将到来的工作记忆探针的时间预测还额外影响了中间任务的表现，与时间不可预测时相比，当预期记忆探针较早出现时反应更快，而当预期记忆探针较晚出现时反应更慢。由于中间任务总是在记忆延迟期间的同一时间发生，该中间任务表现的差异是由时间预期的任务间后果导致的。因此，我们表明，在多任务设置中，知道即将到来的任务何时需要工作记忆内容不仅有助于相关工作记忆任务的表现，还会影响其他中间任务的表现。
