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Frequency of prospective use modulates instructed task-set interference.

Publication ,  Journal Article
Whitehead, PS; Egner, T
Published in: Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance
December 2018

Recent studies have demonstrated that keeping an instructed task set in working memory (WM) for prospective use can interfere with behavior on an intervening task that employs shared stimuli-the prospective task-set-interference effect. One open question is whether people have strategic control over prospective task-set interference based on their expectations of whether task instructions will have to be implemented or recalled. To answer this question, we conducted two experiments that varied the likelihood with which a set of prospective task instructions would have to be implemented or recalled. Based on the hypothesis that participants are able to strategically modulate the manner in which a prospective task set is encoded in WM, we predicted that, as the frequency of implementing task instructions increased, so too would the magnitude of the prospective task-set-interference effect. We found that task instructions held in WM caused significant task-set interference, even in mostly recall conditions, but-crucially-that this interference effect scaled positively with the likelihood of having to implement the prospective set. These data suggest that task instructions are obligatorily encoded as a procedural task set, but that the degree to which this set impinges on ongoing stimulus processing is subject to some strategic control, possibly via modulation of the associations between declarative and procedural WM contents. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

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Published In

Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance

DOI

EISSN

1939-1277

ISSN

0096-1523

Publication Date

December 2018

Volume

44

Issue

12

Start / End Page

1970 / 1980

Related Subject Headings

  • Psychomotor Performance
  • Pattern Recognition, Visual
  • Memory, Short-Term
  • Male
  • Humans
  • Goals
  • Female
  • Experimental Psychology
  • Executive Function
  • Attention
 

Citation

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Whitehead, P. S., & Egner, T. (2018). Frequency of prospective use modulates instructed task-set interference. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance, 44(12), 1970–1980. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000586
Whitehead, Peter S., and Tobias Egner. “Frequency of prospective use modulates instructed task-set interference.Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance 44, no. 12 (December 2018): 1970–80. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000586.
Whitehead PS, Egner T. Frequency of prospective use modulates instructed task-set interference. Journal of experimental psychology Human perception and performance. 2018 Dec;44(12):1970–80.
Whitehead, Peter S., and Tobias Egner. “Frequency of prospective use modulates instructed task-set interference.Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance, vol. 44, no. 12, Dec. 2018, pp. 1970–80. Epmc, doi:10.1037/xhp0000586.
Whitehead PS, Egner T. Frequency of prospective use modulates instructed task-set interference. Journal of experimental psychology Human perception and performance. 2018 Dec;44(12):1970–1980.

Published In

Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance

DOI

EISSN

1939-1277

ISSN

0096-1523

Publication Date

December 2018

Volume

44

Issue

12

Start / End Page

1970 / 1980

Related Subject Headings

  • Psychomotor Performance
  • Pattern Recognition, Visual
  • Memory, Short-Term
  • Male
  • Humans
  • Goals
  • Female
  • Experimental Psychology
  • Executive Function
  • Attention