Modality compatibility in task switching depends on processing codes and task demands
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Modality compatibility in task switching depends on processing codes and task demands Erik Friedgen1 · Iring Koch1 · Denise Nadine Stephan1 Received: 29 January 2020 / Accepted: 26 August 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Modality compatibility denotes the match between sensory stimulus modality and the sensory modality of the anticipated response effect (for example, vocal responses usually lead to auditory effects, so that auditory–vocal stimulus–response mappings are modality-compatible, whereas visual–vocal mappings are modality incompatible). In task switching studies, it has been found that switching between two modality-incompatible mappings (auditory-manual and visual–vocal) resulted in higher switch costs than switching between two modality-compatible mappings (auditory–vocal and visual-manual). This finding suggests that with modality-incompatible mappings, the anticipation of the effect of each response primes the stimulus modality linked to the competing task, creating task confusion. In Experiment 1, we examined whether modalitycompatibility effects in task switching are increased by strengthening the auditory–vocal coupling using spatial-verbal stimuli relative to spatial-location stimuli. In Experiment 2, we aimed at achieving the same goal by requiring temporal stimulus discrimination relative to spatial stimulus localisation. Results suggest that both spatial-verbal stimuli and temporal discrimination can increase modality-specific task interference through a variation of the strength of anticipation in the response-effect coupling. This provides further support for modality specificity of cognitive control processes in task switching. When two tasks have to be performed in alternation, higher response time (RT) and error rates can be observed (see Kiesel et al., 2010; Koch, Poljac, Müller, & Kiesel, 2018, for reviews). Such costs do not only arise when switching from one task to the other (switch costs), but occur even when a task is repeated: The mere presence of another task in the same block of trials leads to worse performance compared to a block containing only one of the two tasks (mixing costs). In research on task switching, switch costs are often understood as reflecting the competition of task representations (task sets) and the need to “reconfigure” the current task set (Monsell, 2003). Meanwhile, mixing costs have been interpreted as either reflecting the higher load on working memory that arises from having to maintain two task sets in an activated state rather than just one (e.g. Los, 1996), or, alternatively, to the uncertainty of which task will have to be performed next (e.g. Poljac, Koch, & Bekkering, 2009; Rubin & Meiran, 2005).
* Erik Friedgen [email protected]‑aachen.de 1
Institute of Psychology, RWTH Aachen University, Jägerstr. 17/19, 52066 Aachen, Germany
In dual-task research, such performance costs of multitasking have often been attributed to a structural bottleneck (Pashler, 1994) or to a shared, but content-free resource (Kahneman,
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