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Journal Article

Citation

Koch I, Schuch S, Vu KP, Proctor RW. Acta Psychol. 2011; 136(3): 399-404.

Affiliation

Institute of Psychology, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.actpsy.2011.01.006

PMID

21296307

Abstract

In task switching, response repetitions typically lead to performance benefits for task repetitions but costs for task switches. We examined whether this cost-benefit pattern is affected by response discriminability (RD), varying (a) the anatomical response separation (within-hand vs. between-hand responses) and (b) the spatial separation (close vs. far response keys). We assumed that anatomical RD increases response competition generally, whereas spatial RD increases the salience of left-right coding and thus facilitates response selection. In two experiments, we found that spatial RD increased the response-repetition costs in task switches but similarly decreased the response-repetition benefit in task repetitions. The effect of spatial RD was response-specific but did not interact with task switching. This data pattern is consistent with a recent account that proposed that facilitated response selection increases response "self-inhibition" after response execution. In contrast, the influence of anatomical RD primarily consisted of an overall increase of reaction-time level in all conditions, whereas error rates decreased, suggesting a general shift in response criterion. Taken together, the data suggest that a self-inhibition mechanism on the level of motor response codes contributes to response-repetition effects in task switching, which is possibly independent of task-specific mechanisms of strengthening of associations.


Language: en

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