The Effects Of Cognitive Load In Task Switching

In our daily life, we will switch among different cognitive tasks, the process of switch from one to another called "task switching", which is one of the basic ways of human cognitive activity. Executive control and automatic control are generally considered as the mechanisms which determines the human cognitive processing, the switching processing of task switching is one of the important functions of the central executive system, and in working memory it is mainly embodied in the competition of different tasks(usually two)from the same cognitive resources. Compared to response of switching tasks and repeat tasks, the former is taking longer than the latter, the differences between them is switching cost. Cognitive load refers to the multidimensional structure of load of their cognitive system when learners deal with tasks. This paper attempts to discussing the effects of task switching by such cognitive load as stimulate material types, cue tips and reaction number keys.The research of the experiment is divided into two parts. The experiment A is used to explore the effect of such cognitive load as with-without cue tips, stimulate material types and task types in task switching; B is focused on whether increasing executive reaction buttons will appear significant impact in task switching. The main conclusions of the two experiments are as follows:(1) Under the with cue tips, the interaction of stimulate material types and task types are not significant, and they both do the same result to task switching; under the without cue tips, the interaction of stimulate material types and task types are also not significant, but the task types have main effect; task switching under the condition of with and without cue tips achieves the significant level.(2) In the condition of increasing executive response keys, under the with cue tips, the interaction of stimulate material types and task types are not significant, but the former one has main effect; on the other hand it has the same results; task switching under the condition of with and without cue tips achieves the significant level; and increasing executive keys has much significant effect than former in task switching.