Task Switching

The core deficit in attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) continues to present an enigma to scientists, professionals and parents alike. Medication with methylphenidate has to some extent proven successful, but it is still not known exactly what parts of the deficits in ADHD medication influences. It is thus important to further delineate the nature of ADHD and thoroughly investigate the possible subtypes. In this paper we describe some experiments investigating the nature of inhibition, resource allocation, sustained and selective attention, distractibility and task switching among children with ADHD. The conclusions could be used to advocate for different models of ADHD, e.g., a model of deficient response inhibition or a model of non-optimal resource allocation. Below we present our first steps toward a robot model of ADHD. The computational model can reproduce some of the behaviors shown in children with ADHD in experimental situations. The model suggests that a defici...

An experiment (N=123) examined how individuals cognitively process online news stories depicting African-American characters with stereotype-consistent and -inconsistent attributes and whether distracting online advertisements interfere with story processing. Two cognitive control functions, updating and inhibition, were predicted to moderate the effects of distracting ads. Recall of characters’ attributes and overall characters’ description were included in the study as dependent measures. Findings indicated that distracting online ads hinder recall of information about and descriptions of story characters. Inhibition and updating affect dependent measures and moderate the effects of distracting online ads on characters’ descriptions.

Laboratory research suggests that the processing of painful stimuli can be modulated by selective attention to a particular sensory modality. However, alternative accounts for previous findings remain possible in terms of task-switching and spatial attention effects. In the present study, we examined whether attention can be selectively directed to the pain modality in order to facilitate the processing of the sensory-discriminative aspects of painful laser heat stimuli when these alternatives were ruled out. Participants made speeded spatial discrimination responses to an unpredictable sequence of painful laser heat and visual stimuli presented on the left forearm. On each trial, a symbolic cue predicted the likely modality for the upcoming target on the majority of trials. Participants responded more rapidly when the target was presented in the expected as opposed to the unexpected modality, demonstrating that selective attention can modulate the processing of painful stimuli. These findings are discussed in relation to contemporary theories of crossmodal attention and multisensory information-processing.

This study investigated direct and indirect effects of executive functions on reading comprehension in adolescents (N = 87, M = 14.0 years, SD = 1.5) by testing for parallel mediation of effects of working memory, task-switching, and inhibitory control via decoding and text recall/inference. Working memory showed direct and indirect effects on passage comprehension, the latter mediated by text recall/inference. Task-switching was associated with decoding, but its relation to passage comprehension was not significant. Inhibitory control showed indirect effects on passage comprehension via decoding and text recall/inference. Results indicate overlapping but distinct contributions of executive functions to reading skills.

Can we design an interface to help people make use of the idle time spent looking at progress bars? We propose to augment progress bars with user-controlled functionalities facilitating the switch to temporary activities. We propose a taxonomy of waiting period contexts and possible temporary tasks, then report on participatory design sessions, and a follow-up survey. Finally we describe an early prototype of active progress bar and report a small controlled experiment used to identify the impact of the tool on primary task ...

Recently, several studies stressed the role of response selection in cued task switching. The present study tried to investigate directly the hypothesis that no switch cost can be found when there was no response selection. In two experiments, we combined a cued task switching paradigm with the selective stopping paradigm. Results of the experiments demonstrated that a switch cost was found when participants selected a response, even without response execution. Alternatively, when the response was inhibited without the need of response selection, no switch cost was found. These results provide direct evidence for the distinct role of response selection in cued task switching and suggest that response execution is not a necessary factor to obtain a switch cost.

Design/methodology/approach – This article is a presentation of the current literature on multi-tasking behaviour among knowledge workers with a selective bibliography addressing empirical research into the behavioural, managerial and technological aspects of this ...

Relational elements of language (e.g. spatial prepositions) act to direct attention to aspects of an incoming message. The listener or reader must be able to use these elements to focus and refocus attention on the mental representation being constructed. Research has shown that this type of attention control is specific to language and can be distinguished from attention control for non-relational (semantic or content) elements. Twenty-two monolinguals (18–30 years) and nineteen bilinguals (18–30 years) completed two conditions of an alternating-runs task-switching paradigm in their first language. The relational condition involved processing spatial prepositions, and the non-relational condition involved processing concrete nouns and adjectives. Overall, monolinguals had significantly larger shift costs (i.e. greater attention control burden) in the relational condition than the non-relational condition, whereas bilinguals performed similarly in both conditions. This suggests that...