Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Röttger, Eva
• Janczyk, Markus
• Haider, Hilde
• Fischer, Rico

Titel

No reduction of between-task interference in a dual-task with a repeating sequence of SOAs

Ist Teil von

• Acta psychologica, 2021-11, Vol.221, p.103451-103451, Article 103451

Ort / Verlag

Netherlands: Elsevier B.V

Erscheinungsjahr

2021

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliothek - Frei zugängliche E-Journals

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• A frequent observation in dual-tasking is that spatially or conceptually (in)compatible Task 2 response features can interfere with responses in Task 1 (backward crosstalk effect; BCE). Such between-task interference is, at least to some degree, under strategic control. It has been shown that the size of the BCE can be modulated by instructions, contextual regularities, recent experience of conflict, and motivational factors. Especially large temporal task overlap (i.e., short stimulus onset asynchrony, SOA) represents a condition of potentially high levels of between-task interference. Accordingly, Fischer and Dreisbach (2015) showed that specific stimuli, associated with mostly short SOAs, were able to reduce the size of the BCE. In the present study, we investigated whether a regular sequence of SOAs can also be used for contextual regulation of the BCE. In a dual-task with spatially (in)compatible hand- and foot-responses, we implemented a repeating sequence of three SOAs. If participants learned this sequence and used it for task shielding, the BCE should decrease over time in the sequence blocks, but should increase in a subsequent random block. However, this prediction was not supported in two experiments (N = 32 each). Instead, the size of the BCE was constant across all blocks (BFs10 < 1 for the respective interactions). This is an important result, as it points at the necessity to discover the appropriate conditions allowing implicit SOA sequence learning and to further investigate whether or how the resulting implicit sequence knowledge can serve shielding against between-task interference. •Can a regular sequence of SOAs in a dual-task be used for contextual task shielding?•If a sequence of SOAs can be implicitly learned, task shielding should increase across SOA sequence blocks, indicated by a decreasing BCE.•When the SOA sequence is removed in a final random block, the BCE should increase again.•Results of this study suggest that more research is necessary.