Priming cue encoding by manipulating transition frequency in explicitly cued task switching

Schneider, Darryl W.; Logan, Gordon D. · 2006 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.3758/bf03193826

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Summary

This study investigates how transition frequency influences switch costs in explicitly cued task switching, addressing conflicting interpretations of whether these costs reflect executive control processes or memory-based priming. Previous research yielded inconsistent results regarding the magnitude of switch costs, with some studies attributing performance differences to cue-encoding effects and others to executive reconfiguration. Schneider and Logan hypothesized that transition frequency—the probability of repeating or switching tasks—modulates switch costs by priming the encoding of task cues. The researchers conducted an experiment with 18 participants who performed two tasks: classifying single-digit numbers as odd/even or high/low. Each task was associated with two distinct cues, allowing for three transition types: cue repetitions (same cue, same task), task repetitions (different cue, same task), and task alternations (different cue, different task). Participants completed three separate sessions, each manipulating the frequency of one transition type to 0.70, while the other two occurred with a frequency of 0.15. Stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) between cue and target varied across five levels (0, 100, 200, 400, and 800 msec) to analyze the time course of performance. Results demonstrated that switch cost, defined as the response time difference between task alternations and task repetitions, varied significantly with transition frequency. Switch costs were smallest (12 msec) when task alternations were frequent, moderate (75 msec) when cue repetitions were frequent, and largest (112 msec) when task repetitions were frequent. Mathematical modeling of the response time data indicated that these differences were driven by variations in cue-encoding time rather than residual processing time. Specifically, cue encoding was faster for frequent transitions compared to infrequent ones, a relationship captured by a frequency priming factor. The model showed that cue encoding was approximately 17.6% faster when a transition was frequent, regardless of the transition type. The findings suggest that switch costs in explicitly cued task switching are largely attributable to the priming of cue encoding, influenced by the frequency of past transitions. This challenges the interpretation of switch costs as pure measures of executive control reconfiguration, proposing instead that they reflect automatic or strategic priming mechanisms. The study implies that differences in task-switching performance may stem from basic psychological processes related to memory retrieval and expectancy, rather than solely from high-level executive functions. Consequently, researchers must distinguish between cue-encoding effects and executive control processes when interpreting switch costs.

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• task switching