title: Short cue presentations encourage advance task preparation: a recipe to diminish the residual switch cost.
abstract: In the task-switching literature, it has frequently been demonstrated that although advance task preparation reduces the switch cost, it never really eliminates the switch cost. This remaining residual switch cost received much attention, and it has been argued that advance preparation is restricted in nature. In the present study, the role of task-cue presentation in the establishment of the residual switch cost was investigated. In 4 experiments, the cue was removed during the preparation interval, and it was hypothesized that this would encourage participants to complete advance task preparation. The results of all 4 experiments provided support for this hypothesis: When the cue was presented for a short time and then removed, the residual switch cost completely disappeared. This was found for different cue types. Furthermore, Experiment 3 demonstrated that it was not the presence of the cue itself but merely differences in advance task preparation that caused the effects. This suggests that advance task preparation is not as restricted in nature as previously assumed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium. Frederick.Verbruggen@Ugent.be
authors.forename: Frederick
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Verbruggen
authors.forename: Baptist
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Liefooghe
authors.forename: André
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Vandierendonck
authors.forename: Jelle
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Demanet
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D001364:Awareness; D003118:Color Perception; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011601:Psychophysics; D011930:Reaction Time; D012718:Set, Psychology