The effects of recent practice on task switching.
Four experiments investigated the effect of recent selective practice on the cost of switching between 2 tasks afforded by letter-digit pairs: alphabet arithmetic and shape comparison. Experiments 1 and 2 found a greater cost associated with switching to the more recently practiced task: evidence that task-set inertia contributes to switching costs. Experiment 3 found this effect to be limited to trials on which a recently trained stimulus followed another such stimulus: a result problematic for all current theories of task-set priming. Experiment 4 showed that the effect of recent practice was eliminated by active preparation for a task switch: It appears that endogenous task-set preparation reduces the effects of task-set inertia. ((c) 2003 APA, all rights reserved)
Yeung
Nick
N
U Cambridge, Dept of Psychology, Cambridge, England. nyeung@princeton.edu
Monsell
Stephen
S
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008433:Mathematics; D008606:Mental Processes; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011214:Practice, Psychological; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time; D012718:Set, Psychology; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014706:Verbal Learning