MSH Medical School Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.
University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2023 Jun;236:103921. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2023.103921. Epub 2023 Apr 19.
An important cognitive requirement in multitasking is the decision of how multiple tasks should be temporally scheduled (task order control). Specifically, task order switches (vs. repetitions) yield performance costs (i.e., task-order switch costs), suggesting that task order scheduling is a vital part of configuring a task set. Recently, it has been shown that this process takes specific task-related characteristics into account: task order switches were easier when switching to a preferred (vs. non-preferred) task order. Here, we ask whether another determinant of task order control, namely the phenomenon that a task order switch in a previous trial facilitates a task order switch in a current trial (i.e., a sequential modulation of task order switch effect) also takes task-specific characteristics into account. Based on three experiments involving task order switches between a preferred (dominant oculomotor task prior to non-dominant manual/pedal task) and a non-preferred (vice versa) order, we replicated the finding that task order switching (in Trial N) is facilitated after a previous switch (vs. repetition in Trial N - 1) in task order. There was no substantial evidence in favor of a significant difference when switching to the preferred vs. non-preferred order and in the analyses of the dominant oculomotor task and the non-dominant manual task. This indicates different mechanisms underlying the control of immediate task order configuration (indexed by task order switch costs) and the sequential modulation of these costs based on the task order transition type in the previous trial.
在多任务处理中，一个重要的认知要求是决定如何在时间上安排多个任务（任务顺序控制）。具体来说，任务顺序的切换（与重复相比）会产生性能成本（即任务顺序切换成本），这表明任务顺序调度是配置任务集的重要组成部分。最近，已经表明这个过程考虑了特定的任务相关特征：当切换到首选（与非首选相比）任务顺序时，任务顺序的切换更容易。在这里，我们询问另一个决定任务顺序控制的因素，即前一个试验中的任务顺序切换是否会在前一个试验中促进当前试验中的任务顺序切换（即任务顺序切换效应的顺序调制），是否也考虑了任务特定的特征。基于三个涉及首选（在非主导手动/脚踏任务之前主导眼球运动任务）和非首选（反之亦然）任务之间的任务顺序切换的实验，我们复制了在前一个试验（试验 N-1 中的重复）中进行任务顺序切换后，在试验 N 中进行任务顺序切换（即任务顺序切换成本）会得到促进的发现。当切换到首选顺序与非首选顺序时，以及在主导眼球运动任务和非主导手动任务的分析中，没有明显的证据支持显著差异。这表明，在控制即时任务顺序配置（由任务顺序切换成本索引）和基于前一个试验中的任务顺序转换类型对这些成本的顺序调制方面，存在不同的机制。
