The Inhibitory Processes On Different Stages In Task Switching

In a multiple task environment, people often switch among different tasks. Comparing with repeating the same task, switching to another different task is associated with the switch cost. At present, there are two kinds of theories explaining the switch cost, i.e., the reconfiguration viewpoint and the interference viewpoint. The former regards the switch cost as the time needed to reconfigure the new task; the latter considers the switch cost as the consequence of interference between different tasks. A wealth of research has shown that inhibition is triggered to resolve the interference. Up to now, it still remains a question on what stage inhibition is generated. The present research adopted the task cuing paradigm and consists of three parts of experiments. The inhibition effects produced on stages of cue presentation, stimulus presentation and response selection were investigated in each part of experiments.Part1examined the inhibition effects generated on the stage of cue presentation. Experiment1contrasted three types of cues with different transparency and found that the inhibition effect was smaller with more transparent cues. Response mapping cues produced no inhibition effects. Experiment2randomly manipulated the preparatory interval in every trial and found that inhibition effect was larger with longer preparatory interval in the previous trial. Experiment3set neutral cues as the control condition and found that transition cues exhibited reconfiguration effects and inhibition effects. Part2probed the inhibition effects generated on the stage of stimulus presentation. Experiment4showed that multivalent stimuli produced inhibition effects. Experiment5contrasted inhibition effects induced by univalent and bivalent stimuli and found that the bivalent stimuli could produce inhibition effects, but the univalent stimuli did not do so. Part3explored the inhibition effects generated on the stage of response selection. Experiment6found that overlapping responses could elicit inhibition effects. Experiment7contrasted the inhibition effects caused by overlapping and non-overlapping responses and found that overlapping responses could generate inhibition, while non-overlapping responses did not show the effect. In conclusion, these results indicate that inhibition effects could occur on any stage in task switching, and this inhibition is reactive to conflict information on these stages.