ISAE-SUPAERO, Université de Toulouse, Toulouse, France.
ENAC, Université de Toulouse, Toulouse, France.
PLoS One. 2023 Feb 24;18(2):e0279021. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0279021. eCollection 2023.
Considerable fundamental studies have focused on the mechanisms governing cognitive flexibility and the associated costs of switching between tasks. Task-switching costs refer to the phenomenon that reaction times and accuracy decrease briefly following the switch from one task to another. However, cognitive flexibility also impacts day-to-day life in many complex work environments where operators have to perform several different tasks. One major difference between typical tasks examined in fundamental studies and real-world applications is that fundamental studies often rely on much more similar tasks, which is not the case for real-world applications. In the latter, operators may switch between vastly dissimilar tasks. Therefore, this behavioural study aims to test if task-switching costs are different for switches between similar and dissimilar tasks. The proposed protocol has participants switch between 2 pairs of two tasks each. Between pairs, there is more dissimilarity, while the two tasks within each pair are more similar. In addition, this study examines the impact of mental fatigue and interference in form of confounding information on cognitive flexibility. To induce mental fatigue the participants' breaks between blocks will be limited. We expect that dissimilarity between tasks will result in greater task-switching costs.
大量的基础研究集中在认知灵活性及其在任务切换之间相关成本的机制上。任务切换成本是指在从一项任务切换到另一项任务后，反应时间和准确性短暂下降的现象。然而，认知灵活性在许多复杂的工作环境中也会影响日常生活，在这些环境中，操作人员必须执行多项不同的任务。基础研究中检查的典型任务和实际应用之间的一个主要区别是，基础研究通常依赖于更相似的任务，而实际应用则不是这样。在后一种情况下，操作人员可能在差异很大的任务之间进行切换。因此，这项行为研究旨在测试在相似和不相似任务之间切换时，任务切换成本是否不同。该方案要求参与者在每对中的 2 个任务之间进行切换。在每对之间，任务之间的差异更大，而每对中的两个任务之间的差异更小。此外，本研究还考察了精神疲劳和干扰（以混淆信息的形式）对认知灵活性的影响。为了引起精神疲劳，将限制参与者在块之间的休息时间。我们预计任务之间的差异将导致更大的任务切换成本。
