In 2:1 Cue-task Procedures: The Examination Of Mediator Retrieval Hypothesis

To explore the relation between cue and task has become the focus in research of switching cost while using the explicit task-switching procedures. At present, two theoretical explanations which addressed the interpretation of cues was mainly the association strength and mediated retrieval hypothesis. In the series of experiments,with adopting the 2:1 cue-task switch paradigm,attempting to specify the processes involved in cue interpretation in greater detail. The study manipulated the experiment by manipulating the transparency of the cues and had subjects switch between parity and magnitude(compare with 5) judgments of single Arabic numbers and used the cue-target congruency effect as detection index. In the first experiment,subjects in the trasparent group(ji,ou,da,xiao)showed cue-target congruency effect,while the less transparent group(Odd,Even,Large,Small) and the least group(O,E,L,S)had no signifant cue-target congruency effect.In the experiment 2,we revealed the relations between nontransparent cues and responding Chinese meaning, the less and least grup both showed cue-target congruency effect.In order to exclude the possible of college students,which translated into the Chinese then understand while reading the english words.In the subsequent experiments, both the whole letter and first letter English word were replaced by Chinese cues which similar in morphology.The experiment 3 found the nontransparent group(qi,yu,tai,chuan and he,wei,shu,zhou) has no cue-target congruency effect.Based the experiment 3, the experiment 4 tell subjects about the corresponding morphology relations between nontransparent cues and target cues(ji,ou,da,xiao) and then showed the effect.Our experiments suggest when interpret the nontransparent cues, subjects would retrieve a mediator that is somehow equivalent to a transparent cue and then use that mediator to retrieve the task set or goal in the same mechanism they would use the transparent cue.All in above,in explicit cue-task paradigm, when interpreting instructional cues, the role of mediators play a key role, thus, support the mediator retrieval hypothesis.