Semantic generalization of stimulus-task bindings.
People find it difficult to switch between two tasks, even if they have time to prepare-the so-called residual task shift cost. We studied a switch of tasks from picture naming to word reading, using picture-word Stroop stimuli. Consistent with previous findings, we demonstrate that a large part of the observed task shift cost was due to priming from prior stimulus-response episodes, in which the current task stimulus was encountered in a competing task. We further show that this task-priming effect generalizes to semantically related stimuli, which opens the possibility that most or all of these residual shift costs reflect some sort of generalized proactive interference from previous stimulus-task episodes.
Waszak
Florian
F
Department of Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Munich, Germany. waszak@psy.mpg.de
Hommel
Bernhard
B
Allport
Alan
A
D000328:Adult; D005793:Generalization, Psychological; D006801:Humans; D011930:Reaction Time; D012660:Semantics