Cue the effects: Stimulus-action effect modality compatibility and dual-task costs.

Schacherer, Jonathan; Hazeltine, Eliot · 2020 · Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & Performance

DOI: 10.1037/xhp0000719

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Summary

This paper investigates the source of dual-task costs, specifically examining whether modality-based crosstalk between stimuli and response-induced sensory consequences (action effects) contributes to performance decrements when coordinating two tasks. While previous research established that dual-task costs are larger for modality-incompatible task pairings (e.g., visual-vocal and auditory-manual) than for modality-compatible pairings (e.g., visual-manual and auditory-vocal), the underlying mechanism remained unclear. The authors propose that central response selection processes operate on representations that include anticipated action effects. Consequently, when the modality of a stimulus matches the modality of its associated action effect, crosstalk between concurrent tasks is reduced, whereas mismatched modalities increase interference. To test this hypothesis, Schacherer and Hazeltine conducted five experiments using a dual-task paradigm where participants performed simultaneous tasks involving visual and auditory stimuli paired with manual and vocal responses. The key manipulation involved experimentally induced action effects—additional perceptual events presented immediately after response execution. In the compatible condition, the modality of the action effect matched the stimulus modality (e.g., a visual stimulus produced a visual action effect). In the incompatible condition, the modalities mismatched (e.g., a visual stimulus produced an auditory action effect). An unmanipulated condition served as a baseline with no added action effects. The primary dependent variables were dual-task costs (the difference in performance between simultaneous dual-task blocks and mixed-task blocks) and mixing costs. The results demonstrated that modality-compatible stimulus-action effect pairings produced significantly smaller dual-task costs than modality-incompatible pairings. Furthermore, modality-compatible pairs yielded smaller costs than the unmanipulated baseline, indicating that explicitly matching the modality of the stimulus and the induced action effect facilitates response selection beyond the natural consequences of the response itself. These findings held across different stimulus-response pairings, including those with manual-only responses to control for vocal-specific strategies. The data suggest that the relationship between stimuli and action effects is a critical determinant of dual-task interference. These findings are significant because they provide evidence that post-response sensory events actively influence central response selection processes. By showing that the modality of anticipated action effects modulates dual-task costs, the study refines existing bottleneck and capacity-sharing accounts of multitasking. It implies that the brain’s representation of actions is not limited to motor commands but includes sensory predictions that interact with stimulus codes. This has practical implications for understanding how humans coordinate complex real-world tasks, suggesting that aligning sensory inputs with the expected sensory outcomes of actions can mitigate cognitive interference.

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Topics

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• dual task performance
• multisensory crossmodal
• visual manual
• multimodal feedback