Abstract
Several decades of cognitive research have explored the processes and mechanisms which underlie task switching. Here we report an experiment in which young adult participants were presented with coloured shapes, and were randomly cued to categorise them according to colour, or to shape. Responses were made via dynamic movements of the computer mouse (“mouse tracking”), which allows insight into how decision making unfolds. The results showed that a range of classic findings (mix cost; switch cost; task congruency effects, etc.) emerged strongly in movement trajectories. Initiation of movements was sensitive to task/cue driven but not to stimulus/response driven variables, as well as to task switching. This constellation suggests that task switch costs emerge as a combination of task set reconfiguration, and stimulus-driven sensory-motor mappings.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 8-20 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance |
| Volume | 48 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 29 Nov 2021 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jan 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was supported by China Scholarship Council (PhD scholarship, 201808060111) to Wenting Ye and research Grant RPG-2019-054 by the Leverhulme Trust to Markus F. Damian. We thank Felice van't Wout for invaluable advice on setting up the experiment. Data and code are available on Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/u6gan/).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 American Psychological Association 2022, Vol
Keywords
- cognitive control
- task switching
- decision making
- embodied cognition