Learning a nonmediated route for response selection in task switching

Abstract

Two modes of response selection—a mediated route involving categorization and a nonmediated route involving instance-based memory retrieval—have been proposed to explain response congruency effects in task-switching situations. In the present study, we sought a better understanding of the development and characteristics of the nonmediated route. In two experiments involving training and transfer phases, we investigated practice effects at the level of individual target presentations, transfer effects associated with changing category–response mappings, target-specific effects from comparisons of old and new targets during transfer, and the percentage of early responses associated with task-nonspecific response selection (the target preceded the task cue on every trial). The training results suggested that the nonmediated route is quickly learned in the context of target–cue order and becomes increasingly involved in response selection with practice. The transfer results suggested that the target–response instances underlying the nonmediated route involve abstract response labels coding response congruency that can be rapidly remapped to alternative responses but not rewritten when category–response mappings change after practice. Implications for understanding the nonmediated route and its relationship with the mediated route are discussed.

Does Task Activation in Task Switching Influence Inhibition or Episodic Interference?

“…The observed reduction of the task switch cost with inreasing RCI-once attributed to the time-based decay of task-set activation (Meiran, Chorev, & Sapir, 2000)-has been shown to be attributable to temporal distinctiveness effects during automatic, cue-based retrieval of task-sets from episodic memory (Grange, 2016;Grange & Cross, 2015;Horoufchin et al, 2011). More recent work has shown that the congruency effect in task switching-slowed responding to incongruent TASK ACTIVATION & TASK SWITCHING 22 stimuli which afford more than one response (depending on task) compared to congruent stimuli which afford just one response irrespective of task-can be explained by memory retrieval processes (Schneider, 2014(Schneider, , 2015Schneider & Logan, 2015). The current work-and that of Grange et al (2017)-contributes to this body of work by showing that the n-2 task repetition cost to a large extent can also be explained by episodic memory retrieval.…”

Task-switching costs disappear if non-Chinese participants respond to Chinese characters.

“…For example, participants in Experiment 2B may have categorized features according to the task rules before they selected a response to that feature (e.g., 质 + 玖 ⇒ odd ⇒ left). In contrast, when participants applied the target-first strategy or CTR associations, they may have followed a non-mediated route of response selection (Schneider & Logan 2015). The non-mediated route is quicker because the response can be selected directly through target-response association and does not require categorization of target features in an additional processing step.…”

Target-Response Associations Can Produce Response-Congruency Effects Without Task-Switching Costs

“…It has been suggested that response-congruency effects can be the result of response selection in two different processing routes: a non-mediated route (Kiesel et al, 2007; Wendt and Kiesel, 2008; Waszak et al, 2013; Schneider and Logan, 2015) and a mediated route (Meiran and Kessler, 2008; Schneider and Logan, 2009, 2014; Reisenauer and Dreisbach, 2014; Schneider, 2015, 2017).…”

“…In the non-mediated route, target-response associations are retrieved directly from working memory (Kiesel et al, 2007; Wendt and Kiesel, 2008; Waszak et al, 2013; Schneider and Logan, 2015) bypassing any intermediate target-feature categorization. Response selection should be faster and ERs should be lower in trials with congruent targets because they are only associated with a single response.…”