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The role of working memory for task-order coordination in dual-task situations
Dual-task (DT) situations require task-order coordination processes that schedule the processing of two temporally overlapping tasks. Theories on task-order coordination suggest that these processes rely on order representations that are actively maintained and processed in working memory (WM). Prel...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8885531/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33884485 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00426-021-01517-2 |
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author | Kübler, Sebastian Strobach, Tilo Schubert, Torsten |
author_facet | Kübler, Sebastian Strobach, Tilo Schubert, Torsten |
author_sort | Kübler, Sebastian |
collection | PubMed |
description | Dual-task (DT) situations require task-order coordination processes that schedule the processing of two temporally overlapping tasks. Theories on task-order coordination suggest that these processes rely on order representations that are actively maintained and processed in working memory (WM). Preliminary evidence for this assumption stems from DT situations with variable task order, where repeating task order relative to the preceding trials results in improved performance compared to changing task order, indicating the processing of task-order information in WM between two succeeding trials. We directly tested this assumption by varying WM load during a DT with variable task order. In Experiment 1, WM load was manipulated by varying the number of stimulus–response mappings of the component tasks. In Experiment 2A, WM load was increased by embedding an additional WM updating task in the applied DT. In both experiments, the performance benefit for trials with repeated relative to trials with changed task order was reduced under high compared to low WM load. These results confirm our assumption that the processing of the task-order information relies on WM resources. In Experiment 2B, we tested whether the results of Experiment 2A can be attributed to introducing an additional task per se rather than to increased WM load by introducing an additional task with a low WM load. Importantly, in this experiment, the processing of order information was not affected. In sum, the results of the three experiments indicate that task-order coordination relies on order information which is maintained in an accessible state in WM during DT processing. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8885531 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Springer Berlin Heidelberg |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-88855312022-03-02 The role of working memory for task-order coordination in dual-task situations Kübler, Sebastian Strobach, Tilo Schubert, Torsten Psychol Res Original Article Dual-task (DT) situations require task-order coordination processes that schedule the processing of two temporally overlapping tasks. Theories on task-order coordination suggest that these processes rely on order representations that are actively maintained and processed in working memory (WM). Preliminary evidence for this assumption stems from DT situations with variable task order, where repeating task order relative to the preceding trials results in improved performance compared to changing task order, indicating the processing of task-order information in WM between two succeeding trials. We directly tested this assumption by varying WM load during a DT with variable task order. In Experiment 1, WM load was manipulated by varying the number of stimulus–response mappings of the component tasks. In Experiment 2A, WM load was increased by embedding an additional WM updating task in the applied DT. In both experiments, the performance benefit for trials with repeated relative to trials with changed task order was reduced under high compared to low WM load. These results confirm our assumption that the processing of the task-order information relies on WM resources. In Experiment 2B, we tested whether the results of Experiment 2A can be attributed to introducing an additional task per se rather than to increased WM load by introducing an additional task with a low WM load. Importantly, in this experiment, the processing of order information was not affected. In sum, the results of the three experiments indicate that task-order coordination relies on order information which is maintained in an accessible state in WM during DT processing. Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2021-04-21 2022 /pmc/articles/PMC8885531/ /pubmed/33884485 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00426-021-01517-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Original Article Kübler, Sebastian Strobach, Tilo Schubert, Torsten The role of working memory for task-order coordination in dual-task situations |
title | The role of working memory for task-order coordination in dual-task situations |
title_full | The role of working memory for task-order coordination in dual-task situations |
title_fullStr | The role of working memory for task-order coordination in dual-task situations |
title_full_unstemmed | The role of working memory for task-order coordination in dual-task situations |
title_short | The role of working memory for task-order coordination in dual-task situations |
title_sort | role of working memory for task-order coordination in dual-task situations |
topic | Original Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8885531/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33884485 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00426-021-01517-2 |
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