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The impact of stimulus format on task inhibition during task switching

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Abstract

Switching between competing tasks is supported by active inhibition of the preceding task. The level of task stimulus processing at which interference between competing tasks must occur for inhibition to be recruited is still unclear. Here, we investigated whether inhibition is recruited by task conflict occurring at an early or late (semantic) stage of task stimulus processing by dissociating the task stimulus format from its meaning. In two experiments, participants performed three different numerical judgment tasks on numerical stimuli that could be presented as digits or number words (e.g., “6” or “six”) in a cued task-switching procedure. The effects of the change of stimulus format for the inhibition of the previous task were investigated and assessed by the N-2 task repetition cost, an index of the extent to which task representations are inhibited. The N-2 task repetition cost observed in the same stimulus format condition disappeared when target stimuli on task N-1 were presented in a different format from stimuli of task N-2 and N. This occurred both when the format changed from digits to number words stimuli (Experiment 1) as well as when it changed from number words to digits stimuli (Experiment 2). Results indicated that task set inhibition is recruited very early during the stimulus processing stage. They also provided evidence that task inhibition is not tied to task preparation processes but operates as a reactive, rather than proactive mechanism of conflict resolution.

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Availability of data and material

The datasets generated during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

This study was supported by a grant from the Sapienza University of Rome to SS (RM1181643660189A).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy

    Stefano Sdoia, Pierpaolo Zivi & Fabio Ferlazzo

Authors
  1. Stefano Sdoia
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  2. Pierpaolo Zivi
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  3. Fabio Ferlazzo
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by PZ. The first draft of the manuscript was written by PZ and SS and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Stefano Sdoia.

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Conflict of interest

Authors declare no competing interests.

Ethics approval

The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Department of Psychology of Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, prot. n. 0001289, 07/12/2017 and conducted in accordance with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments. The manuscript does not report clinical studies or patient data.

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Sdoia, S., Zivi, P. & Ferlazzo, F. The impact of stimulus format on task inhibition during task switching. Psychological Research 86, 2185–2194 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-021-01634-y

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