Voluntary task switching under load: Contribution of top-down and bottom-up factors in goal-directed behavior

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, Jun 2010

The present study investigated the relative contribution of bottom-up and top-down control to task selection in the voluntary task-switching (VTS) procedure. In order to manipulate the efficiency of top-down control, a concurrent working memory load was imposed during VTS. In three experiments, bottom-up factors, such as stimulus repetitions, repetition of irrelevant information, and stimulus-task associations, were introduced in order to investigate their influence on task selection. We observed that the tendency to repeat tasks was stronger under load, suggesting that top-down control counteracts the automatic tendency to repeat tasks. The results also indicated that task selection can be guided by several elements in the environment, but that only the influence of stimulus repetitions depends on the efficiency of top-down control. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed within the interplay between top-down and bottom-up control that underlies the voluntary selection of tasks.

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Voluntary task switching under load: Contribution of top-down and bottom-up factors in goal-directed behavior

JELLE DEMANET 0 FREDERICK VERBRUGGEN 0 BAPTIST LIEFOOGHE 0 ANDR VANDIERENDONCK 0 0 Ghent University , Ghent, Belgium The present study investigated the relative contribution of bottom-up and top-down control to task selection in the voluntary task-switching (VTS) procedure. In order to manipulate the efficiency of top-down control, a concurrent working memory load was imposed during VTS. In three experiments, bottom-up factors, such as stimulus repetitions, repetition of irrelevant information, and stimulus-task associations, were introduced in order to investigate their influence on task selection. We observed that the tendency to repeat tasks was stronger under load, suggesting that top-down control counteracts the automatic tendency to repeat tasks. The results also indicated that task selection can be guided by several elements in the environment, but that only the influence of stimulus repetitions depends on the efficiency of top-down control. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed within the interplay between top-down and bottom-up control that underlies the voluntary selection of tasks. - Many researchers assume that goal-directed behavior relies on the intentional and controlled activation of task goals (Baddeley, 1992; Logan & Gordon, 2001; Miller & Cohen, 2001). However, several studies have demonstrated that task goals can also be activated automatically by information in the environment (e.g., Mattler, 2003; Mayr & Bryck, 2007; Verbruggen & Logan, 2009) or by the retrieval of previously formed associations between a stimulus and a particular goal (e.g., Verbruggen & Logan, 2008; Waszak, Hommel, & Allport, 2003). In the present study, we examined the contribution of top-down and bottom-up activation of task goals in voluntary task switching (VTS). In VTS, participants switch between cognitive tasks. They are free to select the task to perform, as long as each task is selected an approximately equal number of times and participants do not follow a predictable pattern of task selection (Arrington, 2008; Arrington & Logan, 2004, 2005; Liefooghe, Demanet, & Vandierendonck, 2009; Mayr & Bell, 2006). A general finding is that participants repeat tasks more often than they switch (Arrington & Logan, 2005). This task-repetition bias has been linked to the efficiency of top-down control processes involved in the voluntary selection of task goals. For example, Mayr and Bell argued that participants tend to repeat tasks because the task on the previous trial is still the most active one when a new task is selected. In order to overcome this bias, the activated task has to be inhibited. Thus, selection of tasks would depend on topdown control processes (see also Arrington & Logan, 2004, 2005). However, several studies have shown that bottom-up processes also contribute to task selection in VTS (e.g., Arrington, 2008), and Mayr and Bell observed that the task-repetition bias was stronger when the stimulus of the previous trial was repeated than when the stimulus alternated. This stimulus-repetition effect suggests that voluntary task selection is not completely immune to bottom-up priming effects. In the present study, we focused on the contribution of top-down control and bottom-up priming in voluntary task selection. Studies in several paradigms have shown that bottom-up factors contribute more to behavior in cognitively demanding situations (for a review, see Lavie, 2005). A manipulation that is often used to reduce the efficiency of top-down control is a concurrent working memory (WM) load (e.g., Logan, 2007). To test the relative contribution of bottom-up and top-down processes in task selection, we manipulated WM load in the VTS paradigm in three experiments. Each experiment consisted of two conditions: a load condition and a no-load condition (see Logan, 2007). In the load condition, participants were shown six letters that they had to remember (study phase), followed by 13 voluntary switch trials (VTS phase), followed by a recall phase, in which participants had to indicate which letters they had been shown in the study phase. In the no-load condition, the study phase was immediately followed by the recall phase, which, in turn, was followed by the VTS phase, so that there was no concurrent memory load during the test phase. We predicted that bottom-up control would contribute more to task selection in the load condition than in the no-load condition. The results of Experiment 1 confirmed this prediction and showed that the stimulusrepetition effects and the task-repetition bias were stronger in the load condition than in the no-load condition. In Experiments 2 and 3, we further tested how stimulus repetitions affected task-selection processes. We propose three accounts for the stimulus-repetition effect. First, the effect could be caused by the repetition of visual information on the screen, which could prime the decision to repeat the task (see also Arrington & Logan, 200 (...truncated)


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Jelle Demanet, Frederick Verbruggen, Baptist Liefooghe, André Vandierendonck. Voluntary task switching under load: Contribution of top-down and bottom-up factors in goal-directed behavior, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2010, pp. 387-393, Volume 17, Issue 3, DOI: 10.3758/PBR.17.3.387