Strategies of flanker coprocessing in single and dual tasks.
In this study, the authors used a dual-task flanker paradigm to investigate the degree to which flankers are coprocessed with the target as a function of whether flankers have to be used as stimuli for a second task. A series of experiments, in which performance in dual tasks was compared with that in single tasks, revealed that participants had a strong tendency to coprocess flankers to a large degree in dual tasks, even if this impaired performance. Coprocessing of flankers was reduced only when totally irrelevant flankers were presented at the beginning of a trial or single tasks were performed on the great majority of trials within a block. The results suggest that it was demanding to process targets and flankers serially when both had to be used for a dual task. As a consequence, target and flankers were processed in parallel, even if this was nonoptimal for target selection.
Hübner
Ronald
R
Kognitive Psychologie, Fachbereich Psychologie, Universitat Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany. ronald.huebner@uni-konstanz.de
Lehle
Carola
C
D000328:Adult; D001245:Association Learning; D001288:Attention; D003118:Color Perception; D003463:Cues; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011601:Psychophysics; D011930:Reaction Time; D012691:Serial Learning