| Task switch in executive control has been a maj or focus in psychology and neuroscience for a long time,while the task-cuing paradigm is probably the most frequently used approaches on the domain of these aspect of studiesHowever,the mechanism of this procedure has come into discussion for a long time.Some researchers argued that it's the interference account to explain the switch cost as a form of encoding benefits when the cue of the current trial is consisting with the previous one and hence challenged theories that attribute task switch cost to task set reconfigurationAlthough the main role of cue processing is still a controversial topic in task switch research,two points are agreed on for almost all the studies.One is that the costs will arise when merely the cue switches and the other is the costs will decrease with the increasing preparation timeBut in almost all the studies,the preparation time was determined by investigators without considering how long would the real psychological process take to get the task ready.Which means the real preparation process might be disrupted by a short preparation time or the participants have to wait a period of time before the task begins.In either case,confounding factors might be involved.What's more,the data analysis in previous studies ignored the test of normality and homogeneity of varianceTherefore,to investigate the effect of cuing process,this study set up a 'self-paced' task-cuing paradigm.In which circumstances,the participants can determine the preparation time between cue and target to reveal the pure mental state of cuing process and let the macaque learnt the taskThe formal experiments in this study comprehensively examined the task type,task difficulties and the impact of the switch type on the task-cuing paradigm and used the generalized linear mixed model to analyze the mean of the preparation time,the mean of the reaction,and the average correct rate.To have a better understanding of the psychological mechanism of task switching,we have used the ex-Gaussian model to fit the average distribution of the reaction time and modeled the average distribution of the preparation time based on the Dirichlet process mixing modelThrough the analysis of the mean and the average distribution of the preparation time,it is found that,under the self-paced experimental setting,the preparation time will be affected by switch type and task type.In the preparation phase,the participants do not prepare for the task in each trial,and sometimes ignore the cue directly coming into the task phase.The proportion of preparations for tasks is a key factor affecting the length of preparationThrough the analysis of the mean and the average distribution of the reaction time,it can be found that the reaction time are affected by task type and task difficulties.The reaction time and accuracy are also affected by switch type,and unlike the findings in traditional research,task switching can improve task performance under the self-paced experimental settings.The analysis of the average distribution of the reaction time shows that switch type only affects the concentration of the subj ect but has no effect on the ability to complete the task By introducing self-paced settings,this study presents the psychological process of the preparation phase more completely and provides a reliable basis for systematically and effectively exploring the psychological mechanism of the task switching process.The generalized linear mixed model and probability distribution model are used to analyze the data,and more accurate and reliable conclusions are obtained.Based on this,the conj ectures of two mutually exclusive psychological processes in the preparation stage are proposed,which could be very helpful to the research in related fields.The establishment of the macaque task switching model could also provide a convenient way for the further study to investigate the neural mechanism of task switching. |
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