Strivens Amy, Koch Iring, Lavric Aureliu
Institute for Psychology, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany.
Department of Psychology, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2025 Jun;78(6):1061-1076. doi: 10.1177/17470218241256361. Epub 2024 Jun 10.
Task-switching experiments have shown that the "switch cost" (poorer performance for task switches than for repetitions) is smaller when the probability of a switch is high (e.g., 0.75) than when it is low (e.g., 0.25). Some theoretical accounts explain this effect in terms of top-down control deployed in advance of the task cue ("pre-cue reconfiguration"). We tested such accounts by manipulating the time available before the onset of the cue (the response-cue interval, RCI), reasoning that top-down pre-cue reconfiguration requires time and therefore its effect should increase with RCI. Participants heard a man and a woman simultaneously speaking number words and categorised the number (< 5 vs. > 5) spoken by the voice specified by a pictorial gender-related cue presented at an RCI of 100 ms or 2,200 ms. The target voice switched with a probability of 0.25 or 0.75 (in separate sessions). In Experiment 1, RTs revealed a large effect of switch probability on the switch cost in the short RCI, which did not increase in the long RCI. Errors hinted at such an increase, but it did not receive clear statistical support and was disconfirmed by a direct and better powered replication in Experiment 2, which fully confirmed the RT pattern from Experiment 1. Thus, the effect of switch probability on the switch cost required little/no time following the response to emerge-it was already at full magnitude at a short RCI-challenging accounts that assume "phasic" deployment of top-down task-set control in advance of the cue.
任务切换实验表明，当切换概率较高（例如0.75）时，“切换成本”（任务切换时的表现比重复时差）比切换概率较低（例如0.25）时要小。一些理论解释认为，这种效应是由于在任务提示之前预先部署的自上而下的控制（“预提示重新配置”）。我们通过操纵提示开始前的可用时间（反应-提示间隔，RCI）来测试这些解释，推断自上而下的预提示重新配置需要时间，因此其效果应随RCI增加。参与者同时听到一男一女说出数字单词，并对由与性别相关的图片提示指定的声音说出的数字（<5与>5）进行分类，提示在100毫秒或2200毫秒的RCI时呈现。目标声音以0.25或0.75的概率切换（在不同的实验环节中）。在实验1中，反应时间显示，在短RCI中，切换概率对切换成本有很大影响，而在长RCI中并未增加。错误提示有这种增加，但未得到明确的统计支持，并且在实验2中通过直接且更有力的重复实验被否定，实验2完全证实了实验1中的反应时间模式。因此，切换概率对切换成本的影响在反应之后几乎不需要/不需要时间就会出现——在短RCI时就已经达到最大程度——这对那些假设在提示之前“阶段性”部署自上而下任务集控制的解释提出了挑战。
