Abstract
Repetition effects are often helpful in revealing information about mental structures and processes. Usually, positive effects have been observed when the stimuli or responses are repeated. However, in task shift studies it has also been found that response repetitions can produce negative effects if the task shifts. Although several mechanisms have been proposed to account for this interaction between task shifting and response repetition, many details remain open. Therefore, a series of four experiments was conducted to answer two questions. First, are motor responses necessary to produce response-related repetition effects, or is response activation sufficient? Second, does the risk of an accidental re-execution of the last response affect the repetition costs? The results show that response activation alone can produce repetition effects. Furthermore, the risk of accidental response re-execution largely modulates these effects.
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Notes
Our proportion of single stimulus trials (50%) is rather small compared with other change task studies, where they were usually within a range of 75 to 90% (Logan, 1994). Nevertheless, we used this smaller proportion in order to keep the experiment within reasonable temporal limits.
Compared with the previous change task studies, we used a somewhat different terminology here. Instead of “signal inhibit trials”, we denote the trials in which participants did not respond to S1 but only responded to S2 “successful change trials.” Furthermore, instead of “signal respond trials” for trials in which participants erroneously responded to S1 and S2, we used “accidental dual task trials” here. The reasons for this adaptation are that (a) the latter terms are only descriptive and do not already imply theoretical connotations that may interfere with the concepts relevant to the purposes of this study, and (b) are more explicit regarding the cases they designate.
Notice that the number of observations per condition were unequal due to the fact that the participants responded on average only to about 17% of the S1 at the SOA of 50 ms, but to about 53% at the SOA of 350 ms. Consequently, the mean RTs for each participant and condition are based on unequal numbers of trials. However, since all conditions comprised at least eight valid trials, which were considered sufficient to estimate the respective mean response times, we did not apply special statistical procedures.
We did not analyze the R1 data in accidental dual task trials, because they are considered as erroneous responses here.
Compared with the previous change task studies, we used somewhat different terminology here. Instead of “signal inhibit trials,” we denote the trials in which participants did not respond to S1 but only responded to S2 “successful change trials.” Furthermore, instead of “signal respond trials” for trials in which participants erroneously responded to S1 and S2, we used “accidental dual task trials” here. The reasons for this adaptation are that (a) the latter terms are only descriptive and do not already imply theoretical connotations that may interfere with the concepts relevant to the purposes of this study, and (b) are more explicit regarding the cases they designate.
We could speculate that index/middle finger or inner/outer keys could also have served as response categories (Logan & Schulkind, 2000). However, with these categories the mappings between stimulus categories and response categories are not spatially consistent across hands. Since spatial consistency between mappings plays an important role (Duncan, 1979), we assumed that the participants would choose spatial response categories. This assumption was confirmed by our data.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Thomas Kleinsorge, Nachshon Meiran, and Stefanie Schuch for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. This research was supported by a grant from the Universität Konstanz, Germany.
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Hübner, R., Druey, M.D. Response execution, selection, or activation: What is sufficient for response-related repetition effects under task shifting?. Psychological Research 70, 245–261 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-005-0219-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-005-0219-8