Practice-related reduction of dual-task costs under conditions of a manual-pedal response combination

Liepelt, Roman; Fischer, Rico; Frensch, Peter A.; Schubert, Torsten · 2011 · Journal of Cognitive Psychology

DOI: 10.1080/20445911.2011.448025

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Summary

This study investigates whether the complete elimination of dual-task costs through extensive practice, previously demonstrated with visual-manual and auditory-verbal tasks, generalizes to a visual-manual and auditory-pedal (VM-AP) task combination. The research addresses the theoretical debate regarding whether dual-task costs stem from structural bottlenecks or strategic processing limitations. While prior work by Schumacher et al. (2001) showed that practice could eliminate costs in VM-AV tasks, it remained unclear if this effect applies to manual-pedal pairings, which involve different motor effectors but potential spatial compatibility conflicts. The authors conducted two experiments. Experiment 1 replicated the Schumacher et al. findings using a VM-AV task pairing to establish baseline conditions sufficient for cost reduction. Eight participants underwent eight practice sessions involving visual location judgments (manual response) and tone frequency judgments (verbal response). The design employed zero stimulus-onset asynchrony, equal task priority instructions, and a performance-based monetary reward system to maximize motivation and encourage parallel processing. Experiment 2 tested the VM-AP combination, where participants responded to visual stimuli with their right hand and auditory tones with their foot. This experiment initially included eight sessions, later extended to 12 sessions for some participants to ensure sufficient practice duration. In Experiment 1, dual-task costs were completely eliminated by the end of the practice period, confirming that the experimental criteria were sufficient to achieve parallel response selection in the VM-AV condition. However, in Experiment 2, dual-task costs remained high and persistent throughout all eight sessions and did not significantly reduce even when practice was extended to 12 sessions. Crucially, no individual participant demonstrated evidence of time-sharing or parallel processing in the VM-AP condition. The results indicate that the complete reduction of dual-task costs does not generalize to the manual-pedal task combination used in this study. The findings suggest that the elimination of dual-task costs is not solely dependent on the use of separate motor effectors or sufficient practice duration, as previously hypothesized. Instead, the persistence of costs in the VM-AP condition implies that other factors, such as spatial dimensional overlap between hand and foot responses or specific interference mechanisms inherent to manual-pedal coordination, may prevent the adoption of parallel processing strategies. This challenges the generalizability of the "perfect time-sharing" phenomenon and highlights the importance of task-specific constraints in dual-task performance models.

Key finding

Unlike visual-manual and auditory-verbal task combinations, dual-task costs for visual-manual and auditory-pedal combinations persist despite extensive practice and do not generalize to complete elimination.

Methodology

lab_experiment

Sample size: 16

Provenance

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Topics

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• dual task performance
• dual task multitasking
• visual manual