The Research Of The Influence On The Backward Inhibition In Sequence Task Switching From The Cue

It is a little slower to execute a same task with those which have been carried out before than to execute a new task, and the error rate may be higher too. This phenomenon is called as Backward Inhibition. As a new phenomenon in task switching, backward inhibition has become a focus which has drawn much attention. And now it has been considered as a model which can interpret the principal of the sequence task switching. As an important component of the task set, the cue has been focused on much. The cue is used to sign which task will be executed in a task set, and the experiments can't go without cues. The relationship between the cues and the targets can be complicated and we can measure it from three different dimensions, such as the transparency of the cue, the preparing effect between the cue and the target stimulus, and the temporarily overlapping cues and targets.In the study we want to know how the complicated relationships between the cues and the target stimulus to influence the backward inhibition with a paradigm of backward inhibition. And in the study we divided the whole research into three sub-researches. Our participants are the college students and postgraduates, about 23 in each experiment.In study 1, it includes one experiment. We changed the transparency of the cues in order to see whether the difference in backward inhibition between ABA task sequences and CBA task sequences changed at the same time.In study 2, the whole study is divided into two experiments. In the first experiment, we changed the levels of interval between response and the next cue (RCI), and in the second experiment we changed the levels of interval between the cue and the target stimulus (CSI). We want to know if there is some difference between two different task sequences in different levels of transparency.In study 3, there are two kinds of relationships between the cue and the target stimulus. They are nonoverlapped in the time, and the stimulus can be presented together with the cue.At last, the results indicate that,(1) Levels of transparency can influence the reaction time, and the reaction time will be prolonged as the level of transparency grows lower. And we can find an n-2 repetition cost only in ABA task sequence, and it will change as the change of the level of transparency.(2) Preparing effect can affect the backward inhibition, and both the prolonged CSI and the prolonged RCI can lead to a less obvious backward inhibition.(3) The temporal relationships between the cues and the targets are overlapped or not, we can find a level change of the backward inhibition, and the relation must influence the level of the backward inhibition cost.All of the findings indicate that when we switch among the different tasks, the transparency of the cue, the preparing effect, and the type of the task sequence can influence the backward inhibition, but whether the cue is overlapped with the stimulus or not does have nothing to do with it.