title: Task switching and response correspondence in the psychological refractory period paradigm.
abstract: Three experiments examined the effects of task switching and response correspondence in a psychological refractory period paradigm. A letter task (vowel-consonant) and a digit task (odd-even) were combined to form 4 possible dual-task pairs in each trial: letter-letter, letter-digit, digit-digit, and digit-letter. Foreknowledge of task transition (repeat or switch) and task identity (letter or digit) was varied across experiments: no foreknowledge in Experiment 1, partial foreknowledge (task transition only) in Experiment 2, and full foreknowledge in Experiment 3. For all experiments, the switch cost for Task 2 was additive with stimulus onset asynchrony, and the response-correspondence effect for Task 2 was numerically smaller in the switch condition than in the repeat condition. These outcomes suggest that reconfiguration for Task 2 takes place after the central processing of Task 1 and that the crosstalk correspondence effect is due to response activation by way of stimulus-response associations.
authors.affiliation: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California 94035, USA. mclien@mail.arc.nasa.gov
authors.forename: Mei-Ching
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Lien
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Schweickert
authors.forename: Robert W
authors.initials: RW
authors.lastname: Proctor
mesh_terms: D003071:Cognition; D006801:Humans; D010700:Phonetics; D011584:Psychology / Q000379:methods*; D011930:Reaction Time; D014796:Visual Perception