Tasks of a feather flock together: similarity effects in task switching.

Full Abstract

Recent research on task switching has paid little attention to how tasks are represented and how the relations between task representations might affect the executive processes engaged to achieve a task switch. Two experiments investigated the effect of task similarity on task switching. Similarity was defined in terms of shared component operations--attentional control settings in Experiment 1 and response modality in Experiment 2--with tasks sharing more component operations said to be more similar to each other than tasks sharing fewer component operations. Across both experiments, task similarity facilitated task switching, seen in reduced switch costs for switching between similar tasks as opposed to dissimilar tasks. These results indicate that task similarity defined in terms of component operations can be used to define a multidimensional task space in which the executive processes of task selection and implementation are active.

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Author information

Author/s: Arrington, Catherine M (CM); Altmann, Erik M (EM); Carr, Thomas H (TH);

Affiliation: Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. kate.arrington(-atsign-)vanderbilt.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

Journal: Memory & cognition (Mem Cognit), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2003-Jul; vol 31 (issue 5) : pp 781-9

Dates: Created 2003/09/05; Completed 2003/10/10; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 12956242, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Attention
Cognition
Cues
Humans

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