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Response inhibition under task switching: its strength depends on the amount of task-irrelevant response activation

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Abstract

Under task switch conditions, response repetitions usually produce benefits if the task also repeats, but costs if the task switches. So far, it is largely undecided how to account for these effects. In the present study, we provide additional evidence in favor of the account that each response is inhibited in order to prevent its accidental re-execution. To test this hypothesis, the risk of an accidental re-execution of a given response was manipulated by modulating the activation of the response in the previous task. In Experiment 1, this was done by means of congruent and incongruent stimuli. As expected, on task switch trials, the repetition costs were larger if a congruent rather than an incongruent stimulus occurred in the previous task. In Experiment 2, the same effect occurred for stimulus-response compatible versus incompatible stimuli in the previous task. In Experiment 3, both manipulations were applied together, which produced almost additive effects. Altogether, the results support the inhibition account for the response repetition effects under task switch conditions.

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Notes

  1. Here and in the following, we use the term “trial” even if actually effects within a trial (i.e. from a first to a second task in a dual-task or sequence procedure) were considered.

  2. For the response times, the effects of congruency and SR-compatibility were additive, as could have been expected from the PDP models mentioned in the introduction (Botvinick et al., 2001; Gilbert & Shallice, 2002; Houghton & Tipper, 1994). With respect to the error rates, however, this was not the case. The reason for this interaction might though simply reflect a floor effect: Given a congruent stimulus, errors are already so infrequent that even if the stimulus was also compatible, this could not further improve performance.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Nachshon Meiran, Iring Koch, and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on a previous version of this manuscript. Furthermore, we thank Johannes Schult and Karen Donath for collecting the data. This research was supported by a grant (Hu 432/9) from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) to the second author.

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  1. Universität Konstanz, Fachbereich Psychologie, Fach D29, 78457, Konstanz, Germany

    Michel D. Druey & Ronald Hübner

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  1. Michel D. Druey
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  2. Ronald Hübner
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Correspondence to Michel D. Druey.

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Druey, M.D., Hübner, R. Response inhibition under task switching: its strength depends on the amount of task-irrelevant response activation. Psychological Research 72, 515–527 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-007-0127-1

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