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Assembling a task space: global determination of local shift costs

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Abstract

Most theorizing on the origin of the costs that are associated with task shifts focuses on local transitions between individual trials. In the present article we argue that this emphasis has resulted in a neglect of more global representational structures, which also determinate shift costs. To substantiate this claim, we employed a set of four tasks that results from a factorial combination of two types of judgment and two judgment-to-response mappings. From previous work it is known that this kind of task combination is associated with a characteristic profile of shift costs as a function of the relation between successive tasks. Previously we have interpreted this profile as an indication of a hierarchically ordered dimensional representation of the two types of judgment and the two judgment-to-response mappings. Such a representation can only be expected to emerge when the two task features, judgment and mapping, vary independently of each other within the same situation. It is shown that the characteristic shift cost profile can indeed only be observed when the performance of any of the four tasks is required in a block of trials. In contrast, with only two tasks occurring in each block of trials, shift costs do not reflect the relation between successive tasks. This finding confirms the importance of global representational structures as a determinant of shift costs beyond local transitions between individual trials.

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Notes

  1. We thank Katherine Arbuthnott for directing our attention to the importance of this point.

  2. An analysis including the response-sequence factor (repetition vs. shift) revealed the typical reversal of response-repetition benefits observed with task repetitions (79 ms) into response-repetition costs in trials with a task shift (33 ms). When we applied the model proposed by Kleinsorge et al. (2002) to the data of Phase 3, the R2 was .987.

  3. Of course, this does not deny the role of instance-based representations of individual trials, which seem to influence performance, especially after large amounts of practice (e.g., Logan, 1988). However, in all the experiments we have conducted so far with the paradigm of the present study we have never observed a disappearance of the characteristic profile of shift costs that we interpret as indicating generalizing switches as a function of practice, although practice varied within the range of several minutes to several hours.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Gerd Förster, Stefan Lapp, Carsten Sander, and Petra Wallmeyer for assistance in data analysis and running the experiment. The research reported in this paper was supported by grant Kl 1205/1-1 of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft given to the first two authors.

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  1. Institut für Arbeitsphysiologie, Universität Dortmund, Ardeystrasse 67, 44139, Dortmund, Germany

    Thomas Kleinsorge, Herbert Heuer & Volker Schmidtke

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  1. Thomas Kleinsorge
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  2. Herbert Heuer
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  3. Volker Schmidtke
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Correspondence to Thomas Kleinsorge.

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Kleinsorge, T., Heuer, H. & Schmidtke, V. Assembling a task space: global determination of local shift costs. Psychological Research 68, 31–40 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-003-0134-9

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