At will or not at will: Electrophysiological correlates of preparation for voluntary and instructed task-switching paradigms

Abstract

The present study investigated whether the advanced reconfiguration processes of the voluntary switching (VTS) paradigm were different from those of the instructed task switching (ITS) paradigm by examining event-related potentials (ERPs) in a within-subjects design. Of importance, given that effector-to-task mapping might lead to differential preparatory strategies, two effector-to-task mapping groups were studied: the hand-to-task (HAND) and finger-to-task (FINGER) groups. Intriguingly, we found the increased posterior negativity for voluntary switch (and/or increased posterior positivity for voluntary repeat) was exclusive to the HAND group, whereas the increased switch-related late posterior positivity in the ITS paradigm was independent of the effector manipulation. Moreover, the lateralized readiness potentials (LRP) and the mu and beta motor-related amplitude asymmetries indicated that the differential switch-related modulations were not the byproduct of hand-specific preparation. The advanced preparatory strategies in the VTS and ITS paradigms are discussed.

To switch or to repeat? Commonalities and differences in the electrophysiological correlates of preparation for voluntary and forced task choices

“…In line with evidence from both voluntary task switching (Poljac & Yeung, 2014) and forced task switching (Karayanidis et al, 2011;but see Lavric et al, 2008), this effect seemed dissociable from the posterior positivity, as it was not significantly influenced by task transition and differed significantly between choice types. However, the effect is not in line with previous ERP studies on voluntary task switching (Chen & Hsieh, 2015;Kang et al, 2014;Poljac & Yeung, 2014;Vandamme et al, 2010) that found a (transition-dependent) enhancement on voluntary trials. A possibility for the diverging effects could be the different stimulus types.…”

“…Studies using other designs offer support for this rather universal finding of the switch positivity in task switching, as it was similarly found in intermittently instructed cued task switching (Barceló et al, 2007), in both response-effector and stimulus-dimension shifts (Hsieh et al, 2014), and with transition instead of task cues (West et al, 2011). More importantly, against the background of methodologically diverse and hence partially contradicting ERP studies in voluntary task switching (Chen & Hsieh, 2015;Forstmann et al, 2007;Kang et al, 2014;Orr et al, 2010, November;Poljac & Yeung, 2014;Vandamme et al, 2010), the current results offer strong support that switch preparation under forced-and voluntary-choice conditions is very similar, after all. Some authors suggested that in order to perform a successful task switch, the cognitive system has to reconfigure the currently active set of task representations in order to match the now relevant task (Monsell, 2003).…”

“…Hence, we refer to the early posterior positivity as an index of task‐set updating and the late portion as an index of task‐set reconfiguration. Finally, it should be noted that some voluntary task switching studies also provided evidence for more negative amplitudes in centroparietal midline electrodes on switches as compared to repetitions (Chen & Hsieh, 2015; Kang et al, 2014).…”

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

“…Moreover, estimation of individual switch costs with the training blocks data might be subject to extra noise because participants need time to familiarize themselves with the experimental setting and the single tasks. It is also an open question whether the Bbaseline^measure of switch costs with the alternating-run training procedure used here is suitable to represent switching limitations that are supposedly also present in the voluntary task-switching blocks: Although the substantial positive correlations between training and voluntary switch costs indeed suggest that these limitations rely on similar processes, it should be noted that even switch costs in procedures differing only in how task order is determined (i.e., explicit cuing vs. alternating runs) should not be treated as identical measures (Altmann, 2007), and many studies found that voluntary switch costs are often smaller than switch costs in externally controlled task switching (e.g., Arrington & Logan, 2005;Chen & Hsieh, 2015;Demanet & Liefooghe, 2014;Orr & Weissman, 2011). Thus, all correlational data (i.e., correlations within the voluntary switching blocks and between training and voluntary switching blocks) must be interpreted with caution, and future studies with larger samples are clearly needed if researchers wish to investigate individual differences with the present paradigm.…”

Voluntary choice tasks increase control settings and reduce capture

“…Cuing distractor identity immediately before search onset may fail, therefore, because it provides only very weak task set instantiation. The task-switching literature has shown that voluntary choice designs in which participants choose what they will respond to, allow for optimal task set preparation when compared to trial-by-trial cuing paradigms (Arrington & Logan, 2005;Chen & Hsieh, 2015). This was confirmed with a comparison of a cuing and a voluntary choice variant of matched attention capture tasks, using the pre-stimulus CNV component as an index of proactive task set preparation (Henare et al, 2020).…”