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Individual Strategies of Response Organization in Multitasking Are Stable Even at Risk of High Between-Task Interference

Recently, reliable interindividual differences were found for the way how individuals process multiple tasks (at a cognitive level) and how they organize their responses (at a response level). Previous studies have shown mixed results with respect to the flexibility of these preferences. On the one...

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Autores principales: Reinert, Roman, Brüning, Jovita
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9019473/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35465496
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.860219
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author Reinert, Roman
Brüning, Jovita
author_facet Reinert, Roman
Brüning, Jovita
author_sort Reinert, Roman
collection PubMed
description Recently, reliable interindividual differences were found for the way how individuals process multiple tasks (at a cognitive level) and how they organize their responses (at a response level). Previous studies have shown mixed results with respect to the flexibility of these preferences. On the one hand, individuals tend to adjust their preferred task processing mode to varying degrees of risk of crosstalk between tasks. On the other, response strategies were observed to be highly stable under varying between-resource competition. In the present study, we investigated whether the stability of response strategies also persists with increased risk of crosstalk or whether individuals adjust their choice of response strategy, similar to what has been found at the level of task processing modes. Besides, related differences in multitasking efficiency were assessed. For this purpose, 53 participants performed the Free Concurrent Dual-Tasking (FCDT) paradigm, which allows them to control their task scheduling and response organization. The participants completed the FCDT paradigm under two conditions including task pairs characterized by either low or high levels of risk of crosstalk. The free choice of task scheduling resulted in the previously found distinct response patterns, best described as blocking, switching or response grouping. Remarkably, we did not find any notable adjustments of strategies of response organization to the extent of crosstalk. However, we observed suspected performance decrements of a switching strategy in the condition of high risk of crosstalk. The results suggest that individual strategies of response organization are stable habits. Further, they illustrate disadvantages of switching vs. blocking strategies of response organization in case of high task similarity.
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spelling pubmed-90194732022-04-21 Individual Strategies of Response Organization in Multitasking Are Stable Even at Risk of High Between-Task Interference Reinert, Roman Brüning, Jovita Front Psychol Psychology Recently, reliable interindividual differences were found for the way how individuals process multiple tasks (at a cognitive level) and how they organize their responses (at a response level). Previous studies have shown mixed results with respect to the flexibility of these preferences. On the one hand, individuals tend to adjust their preferred task processing mode to varying degrees of risk of crosstalk between tasks. On the other, response strategies were observed to be highly stable under varying between-resource competition. In the present study, we investigated whether the stability of response strategies also persists with increased risk of crosstalk or whether individuals adjust their choice of response strategy, similar to what has been found at the level of task processing modes. Besides, related differences in multitasking efficiency were assessed. For this purpose, 53 participants performed the Free Concurrent Dual-Tasking (FCDT) paradigm, which allows them to control their task scheduling and response organization. The participants completed the FCDT paradigm under two conditions including task pairs characterized by either low or high levels of risk of crosstalk. The free choice of task scheduling resulted in the previously found distinct response patterns, best described as blocking, switching or response grouping. Remarkably, we did not find any notable adjustments of strategies of response organization to the extent of crosstalk. However, we observed suspected performance decrements of a switching strategy in the condition of high risk of crosstalk. The results suggest that individual strategies of response organization are stable habits. Further, they illustrate disadvantages of switching vs. blocking strategies of response organization in case of high task similarity. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-04-06 /pmc/articles/PMC9019473/ /pubmed/35465496 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.860219 Text en Copyright © 2022 Reinert and Brüning. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Reinert, Roman
Brüning, Jovita
Individual Strategies of Response Organization in Multitasking Are Stable Even at Risk of High Between-Task Interference
title Individual Strategies of Response Organization in Multitasking Are Stable Even at Risk of High Between-Task Interference
title_full Individual Strategies of Response Organization in Multitasking Are Stable Even at Risk of High Between-Task Interference
title_fullStr Individual Strategies of Response Organization in Multitasking Are Stable Even at Risk of High Between-Task Interference
title_full_unstemmed Individual Strategies of Response Organization in Multitasking Are Stable Even at Risk of High Between-Task Interference
title_short Individual Strategies of Response Organization in Multitasking Are Stable Even at Risk of High Between-Task Interference
title_sort individual strategies of response organization in multitasking are stable even at risk of high between-task interference
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9019473/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35465496
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.860219
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