Determinants of central processing order in psychological refractory period paradigms: Central arrival times, detection times, or preparation?

Three psychological refractory period (PRP) experiments were conducted to assess the effect of central arrival times at the bottleneck on task order scheduling. In Experiment 1, a visual first task (plus-minus symbol discrimination) was combined with an auditory second task (left-right tone judgemen...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) 2011-10, Vol.64 (10), p.2012-2043
Main Author: Leonhard, Tanja
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustic Stimulation
Adult
Auditory Perception
Biological and medical sciences
Cognition
Cognition. Intelligence
Cognitive control
Discrimination (Psychology)
Dual tasking
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Judgment
Male
Miscellaneous
Photic Stimulation
Psychological refractory period
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Psychomotor Performance
Reaction Time
Refractory Period, Psychological
Visual Perception
Young Adult
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Three psychological refractory period (PRP) experiments were conducted to assess the effect of central arrival times at the bottleneck on task order scheduling. In Experiment 1, a visual first task (plus-minus symbol discrimination) was combined with an auditory second task (left-right tone judgement) in a standard PRP paradigm with constant task order. In Experiment 2, the order of the tasks varied unpredictably. In Experiment 3, visual-auditory dual-task trials were randomly mixed with single-task trials. To dissociate central arrival times from stimulus detection times, the perceptual stage of the visual task was extended using stimulus degradation. Most importantly, no evidence for a first-come, first-served principle at the central bottleneck was found with the employed paradigms. Instead, the results indicated that preparation (Experiment 1) and the detection times of the stimuli (Experiments 2 and 3) were the main determinants of central processing order in the present study. In the light of previous research, the results indicate that central processing order can be influenced by various factors. The interplay between these factors seems to depend highly on the conditions and requirements of the employed experimental paradigm.
ISSN:1747-0218
1747-0226
DOI:10.1080/17470218.2011.573567