Response Selection Difficulty and Asymmetrical Costs of Switching Between Tasks and Stimuli: No Evidence for an Exogenous Component of Task-Set Reconfiguration

• Published in: Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance 2004-12, Vol.30 (6), p.1043-1063
• Main Authors: Hübner, Mike, Kluwe, Rainer H, Luna-Rodriguez, Aquiles, Peters, Alexandra
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Activity levels. Psychomotricity; Adult; Attention; Attention Control; Biological and medical sciences; Cognition; Cognitive Processes; Discrimination Learning; Exploratory Behavior; Familiarity; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Human; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; Miscellaneous; Perceptions; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Reaction Time; Responses; Stimuli; Stimulus Frequency; Stimulus Presentation Methods; Task Analysis; Task Complexity
• ISSN: 0096-1523; 1939-1277
• DOI: 10.1037/0096-1523.30.6.1043

Four task-switching experiments examined the notion of an exogenous component of task-set reconfiguration (i.e., a process needed to shift task set that is not initiated in the absence of a task-associated stimulus). The authors varied the complexity and familiarity of stimulus-response (SR) mapping rules to produce differentially time-consuming reconfiguration demands. Tasks with more complex or less familiar rules did not display increased switch costs, given that stimulus repetitions were excluded from the analysis. These results do not support the idea of exogenous reconfiguration. Moreover, stimulus repetitions inflated task-switch costs and did so disproportionately for tasks with increased response selection difficulty, thereby demonstrating that insufficient control of the sequence of stimuli may yield results that mimic those predicted by exogenous reconfiguration accounts.