Searching working memory for the source of dual-task costs
DOI: 10.1007/s00426-011-0343-6
archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified
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Summary
This study investigates the source of dual-task costs by examining the relationship between modality-pairing effects in dual-task performance and domain-specific interference in working memory (WM). While the response selection bottleneck (RSB) model posits a generic, amodal serial stage for response selection, empirical evidence shows that dual-task costs vary significantly depending on the pairing of stimulus and response modalities. The authors hypothesize that response selection engages domain-specific WM processes, meaning that interference arises when tasks compete for similar types of information within WM. To test this, the researchers designed an experiment to determine if the response modality of a choice reaction time (RT) task selectively interferes with WM maintenance of congruent information types. The experimental design involved 56 undergraduate participants divided into four groups in a 2 × 2 factorial design. The factors were the type of information held in WM (sequences of four tones or four spatial locations) and the response modality for the choice-RT task (vocal or manual). Participants performed blocks where they maintained a WM sequence while simultaneously performing a choice-RT task involving word categorization (bugs, foods, trees). The choice-RT stimuli and decision rules remained constant across groups; only the response method varied. Performance was measured by WM capacity (using Cowan’s K) and choice-RT reaction times. This design allowed the researchers to isolate the effect of response codes on WM interference, independent of stimulus encoding differences. The results demonstrated a significant three-way interaction between WM load type, response modality, and task condition (single vs. dual). Specifically, WM capacity decreased significantly during dual-task performance, but the magnitude of this decrement depended on the match between the WM content and the response modality. Vocal responses in the choice-RT task caused greater interference with WM for tone sequences than for spatial locations. Conversely, manual responses caused greater interference with WM for spatial locations than for tones. This pattern mirrors modality-pairing effects observed in previous dual-task studies, where visual-manual and auditory-vocal pairings produced lower costs than cross-modal pairings. Reaction time data for the choice-RT task showed little evidence of interference from the WM load, suggesting participants prioritized the speeded RT task, thereby isolating the interference effects to the WM domain. These findings indicate that response selection is not a generic, amodal process but engages domain-specific WM resources. The selective interference suggests that dual-task costs arise from competition within these domain-specific WM processes rather than solely from a central bottleneck. This supports a resource-based account of dual-task performance, where the magnitude of interference depends on the overlap in the types of information processed by concurrent tasks. The study provides empirical evidence linking the structure of WM to the mechanisms of response selection, offering a more nuanced explanation for modality-pairing effects than traditional RSB models.
Provenance
The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via author_sweep_intake on 2026-05-28.
| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | author_sweep | — | — | 2 | 2026-05-28 |
| archive | success | canonical_url | — | — | 7 | 2026-06-09 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
| clean | success | clean | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-09 |
| chunk | success | chunk | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-09 |
| embed | success | embed | Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B | — | 1 | 2026-06-09 |
| enrich | failed | — | — | — | 5 | 2026-07-02 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 1 | 2026-06-10 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 8 | 2026-06-11 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-10 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.
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