Assessing the role of reward in task selection using a reward-based voluntary task switching paradigm

Abstract

People exhibit a remarkable ability to both maintain controlled focus on executing a single task and flexibly shift between executing several tasks. Researchers studying human multitasking have traditionally focused on the cognitive control mechanisms that allow for such stable and flexible task execution, but there has been a recent interest in how cognitive control mechanisms drive the decision of task selection. The present research operationalizes a foraging analogy to investigate what factors drive the decision to either exploit task repetitions or explore task switches. A novel paradigm-reward-based voluntary task switching-ascribes point values to tasks where the overall goal is to accumulate points as quickly as possible. The reward structure generally rewards switching tasks, thereby juxtaposing the motivation to gain increased reward (by exploring task switches) against the motivation to perform quickly (by exploiting task repetitions). Results suggest that people are highly sensitive to changes in both reward and effort demands when making task selections, and that the task selection process is efficient and flexible. We argue that a cost-benefit mechanism might underlie decisions in multitasking contexts, whereby people compute task selections based on both the reward available for selecting a task and the effort necessary to execute a task.

Trading off switch costs and stimulus availability benefits: An investigation of voluntary task-switching behavior in a predictable dynamic multitasking environment

“…Here, we extended this finding by showing that steadily increasing switch stimulus availability can induce a task switch. Recent task-switching studies have also successfully induced switching behavior without a randomness instruction by intermixing free-and forced-choice trials (Fröber & Dreisbach, 2017) or by rewarding task switches with points (Braun & Arrington, 2018). Thus, the present study provides further evidence of flexible adaptive switching behavior by showing that people are also able to adapt their task selection behavior to the current task environment, including task availabilities.…”

Balancing cognitive and environmental constraints when deciding to switch tasks: Exploring self-reported task-selection strategies in self-organised multitasking

“…For example, when the stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) of two task stimuli is randomly manipulated (e.g., either the letter or the number stimulus is presented first), participants are biased to select the tasks associated with the first stimulus (e.g., Arrington, 2008). Such environmental biases in participants’ task selection behaviour can be seen as hints of adaptive attempts to improve overall task performance in light of environmental constraints (e.g., for similar reasoning, see Braun & Arrington, 2018). However, this interpretation can only be made indirectly in most VTS experiments: Participants actually fail to comply with the instructions to select a task randomly when they systematically incorporate any environmental or cognitive factors into their task selection behaviour (e.g., Mittelstädt, Dignath, et al, 2018).…”

Increasing reward prospect motivates switching to the more difficult task.

“…Switch costs as performance measures are believed to reflect the higher cognitive control demands on switch trials, either in the form of task set reconfiguration and/or because of interference from the competing, just performed task (for reviews see Kiesel et al, 2010; Vandierendonck, Liefooghe, & Verbruggen, 2010). Similarly, the repetition bias in task choice is, among others, thought to reflect people’s tendency to avoid the cognitive effort associated with switching (Braun & Arrington, 2018; Kool et al, 2010; McGuire & Botvinick, 2010; Mittelstädt, Dignath, Schmidt-Ott, & Kiesel, 2018).…”