Advance preparation and stimulus-induced interference in cued task switching: further insights from BOLD fMRI

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Abstract

To switch from one cognitive task to another is thought to rely on additional control effort being indicated by performance costs relative to repeating the same task. This switch cost can be reduced by advance task preparation. In the present experiment the nature of advance preparation was investigated by comparing a situation where an explicit task cue was presented 2000 ms in advance of the target stimulus (CTI-2000) with a situation where cue and target were presented in close succession (CTI-100). We mapped the blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) activation correlates of switch-related control effort and advance task preparation to test alternative explanations why advance preparation is reducing switch costs. A previously reported control-related cortical network of frontal and parietal brain areas emerged that was more strongly activated for switching between tasks. However, this was true exclusively for CTI-100 where no advance task preparation was possible. At CTI-2000 these same brain areas were equally engaged in both switch and repeat trials. For some of these areas, this common activation was time-locked to the presentation of both the cue as well as the target. Other areas were exclusively associated with target processing. The overall pattern of results suggests that advance task preparation is a common process of pre-activating (cue-locked activation) the currently relevant task set which does not face interference from a persisting N − 1 task set. During target processing the same brain areas are re-engaged (subsequent target-locked activation) to apply the pre-activated task set. Though being common to repeat and switch trials, advance preparation has a differential benefit for switch trials. This is because the instructed task set has time to settle into a stable state, thus becoming resistant against disruption from the previous task set, which is retrieved by the current target stimulus.

Introduction

Task switching is commonly held to be an appropriate paradigm for the exploration of executive control (e.g. Monsell, 2003a). Controlled information processing enables behavior that goes beyond inflexible stimulus-driven S–R association. Successful behavior in task switching would fail if subjects based their performance on fixed S–R mappings while ignoring task-specific contextual constraints on action. In compliance with ‘contextual constraints’, subjects are able to mentally structure the configuration of potentially available objects-for-action and potential response options (i.e. a task set is formed) in accordance with an internally represented goal.

Studies on brain-damaged patients (Milner, 1963; Stuss & Benson, 1986), non-human primates (Fuster, 1980, Goldman-Rakic, 1987, Miller and Cohen, 2001; Milner, 1963, Stuss and Benson, 1986), and brain-imaging studies (Brass & von Cramon, 2002; Nagahama et al., 1999, Passingham et al., 2000; Seitz & Binkofski, 2000; Toni, Rushworth, & Passingham, 2001) suggest an important role of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) subserving this kind of goal-directed behavior. Furthermore, studies that measure PFC and parietal cortex simultaneously usually show that the PFC acts in concert with the parietal cortex in order to implement control (Chafee & Goldman-Rakic, 1998; Dove, Pollmann, Schubert, Wiggins, & von Cramon, 2000; Sohn, Ursu, Anderson, Stenger, & Carter, 2000).

The task switching paradigm captures two core features of goal-directed behavior: flexibility and anticipatory control. Flexibility is realized by introducing frequent changes of the relevant goal (i.e. the task to be performed), which is operationalized by the independent variable task transition (task switch versus task repeat). Anticipatory control comes into play when the upcoming task can be prepared in advance, which is operationalized by the independent variable preparation interval with either a short interval (no advance preparation) or a long interval (advance preparation).

With this very basic design the present functional imaging study aimed at investigating the nature of advance task preparation and its relevance for flexibly switching between alternative tasks. This issue is central for understanding the basic cognitive mechanisms underlying task switching performance and has been causing severe controversy among theorists (Altmann, 2003, Monsell, 2003a, Monsell, 2003b).

One basic empirical finding is that switching from one task to another task as compared to repeating the same task impairs behavioral performance. These ‘switch costs’ are supposed to reflect the need for a stronger engagement of control to enable a task switch. Or, in other words, switch costs reflect elevated control being necessary to counteract the tendency to repeat the previously performed task. The two scenarios outlined below make different assumptions about how this perseverative tendency is mediated.

Another important finding is that switch costs are often reduced with prolonged preparation intervals (e.g. Meiran, 1996; Rogers & Monsell, 1995). This observation suggests that a task switch can be prepared in advance. Two different explanations for this switch cost reduction are being contrasted in the present study.

According to the first scenario, the system tends to perseverate because the previously adopted task set is persisting over time into the next trial. Thus, establishing the competing task set in a current switch trial requires additional time-consuming control effort because proactive interference from the persistently activated, now misleading task set has to be overcome. With sufficient preparation time, this same process can be finished in advance of target presentation. As proactive interference has already been overcome during the preparation interval, it is no longer slowing down appropriate task implementation after the target has been presented. This notion to some degree resembles the concept of ‘advance task set re-configuration’ (Meiran, 1996; Rogers & Monsell, 1995).

According to the second scenario, a previously adopted task set is dissipating rapidly before the next trial is presented. Thus, it is not the persistently activated previous task set that causes interference in a current switch trial. Alternatively, as recent studies are suggesting, interference might be induced by the target stimulus itself which is retrieving the previous task set from memory (Allport & Wylie, 2000; Waszak et al., 2003, Waszak et al., in press; Wylie & Allport, 2000). However, when every new trial starts with a neutral task set because interference is induced only after the target has been presented, there is nothing which can be done during preparation but biasing the initially neutral task set in the direction of the currently instructed task set—and this is equal for both switch and repeat trials. It is therefore not immediately clear why advance task preparation being equally engaged for both trial types should have a benefit that is differently stronger for switch trials compared to repeat trials as being indicted by reduced switch costs. A solution for this paradox is that a task switch can benefit differentially from advance preparation because the target-associated previous task set loses its potential to gain a misleading influence during task implementation. This is because the instructed task set has time to settle into a stable state, thus becoming resistant against later disruption (see also Koch & Allport, submitted for publication). A discussion of related notions can be found in other recent publications (Gilbert & Shallice, 2002; Goschke, 2000; Wylie, Javitt, & Foxe, 2003; Yeung & Monsell, 2003).

By measuring the subjects’ behavioral performance, the involvement of a task preparation process can be inferred only indirectly from the beneficial impact it has during the subsequent task implementation. Functional MRI can be used to obtain a more direct record of the ongoing preparation process by measuring the correlated blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) activation. In the present study we were measuring BOLD activation to distinguish between the two theoretical scenarios sketched above, which are both equally compatible with the reduction of behavioral switch costs.

We realized an explicitly cued task switching procedure (i.e. an unpredictable task cue indicated the current task) and introduced a long preparation interval of 2000 ms (CTI-2000) and a short preparation interval of 100 ms (CTI-100). An accumulating number of previous fMRI studies using cued task switching procedures did not find elevated BOLD activation for switch trials compared to repeat trials with long preparation intervals (Brass & von Cramon, 2002; Braver, Reynolds, & Donaldson, 2003; Dove, 2000; Luks, Simpson, Feiwell, & Miller, 2002).

This result intuitively appears to be incompatible with the notion that establishing the instructed task set in switch trials is facing interference from the persistently activated, now misleading previous task set. The advance resolution of this interference should require more control effort during preparation than merely refreshing the task set in repeat trials. This should be paralleled by stronger BOLD activation for switch compared to repeat trials.

We suggest to explain this rather unexpected result in terms of the alternative scenario outlined above, which accounts for reduced behavioral switch costs without assuming that between-task interference is being resolved during preparation. This account predicts reduced or even absent additional switch-related control effort when advance preparation is possible, both during task preparation and during task implementation. Hence, being easily compatible with the absence of enhanced BOLD activation at long preparation intervals.

Furthermore, this account predicts that interference caused by the target-induced N − 1 task set impairs task implementation specifically when advance preparation is not possible. Thus, high switch-related control demands with a short preparation interval should be reflected by enhanced activation in switch trials compared to repeat trials. This is exactly the pattern Dove et al. (2000) observed for several frontal and parietal brain areas realizing a CTI of 0 s.

Different from previous fMRI studies we realized a short and a long CTI condition within the same subjects which allows to draw stronger conclusions regarding the comparison of switch-related BOLD effects for different CTIs. Moreover, as being delineated below, a fine-grained analysis of the temporal structure of the trial-related BOLD response was intended to bring about further theoretical constraints.

As argued above, determining the pattern of switch-related BOLD activation for CTI-100 and CTI-2000 can reveal important information. However, it would be even more informative to know, whether brain areas that are engaged in the CTI-2000 condition are involved in cue-related and/or target-related processing. Unfortunately, the analysis of fMRI time courses notoriously faces problems of decomposing a trial-related BOLD response into sub-components associated with separate within-trial events (cue and target) when the events are not spaced generously or the event order is not counterbalanced. This problem also holds for the standard method based on multiple linear regression (Friston et al., 1998) which we applied for detecting relevant activations within the whole-brain volume. Any effect we observe for CTI-2000 thus always reflects the sum of effects caused by cue-related and target-related processing.

To gain at least partial information about the composition of the trial-related BOLD response at CTI-2000 we implemented a novel temporal analysis of trial-averaged time courses (Ruge, Brass, Lohmann, & von Cramon, 2003). This method allows to decide whether a brain area of interest is generally activated cue-related and/or target-related in terms of present–absent judgements.

However, if a brain area turns out to be engaged both in the cue phase as well as the target phase, even for this method, the 2000 ms CTI is too short to determine the relative quantitative contributions of the respective cue-related and target-related BOLD sub-components. In this case, the analysis can nevertheless tell that an activation of unspecified strength is associated with both the cue and additionally with the target.

Similarly, potential activation differences between switch and repeat trials at CTI-2000 can not differentially be assigned either to the cue period or to the target period. With regard to the hypothesis that the CTI-2000 condition would not differ between switch and repeat trials, this does not pose a major limitation. Furthermore, it should be noted that, though BOLD activation at CTI-2000 displays the sum of potential cue-related and target-related sub-components, activation effects that are associated with only one sub-component are still detected by both the standard regression-based whole-brain analysis as well as our additional temporal analysis.

Section snippets

Subjects

We measured 22 subjects who all gave written informed consent to participate in the present study. Four subjects were excluded due to movement artifacts, all during the second experimental block (see below). The mean age of the remaining 18 subjects was 25.5 (range 21–35), 10 were female. No subject had a history of neurological disorder, major medical disorder, or psychiatric disorder. All subjects were right-handed as assessed by the Edinburgh Inventory (Oldfield, 1971).

Experimental procedure

We adopted a spatial

Behavioral data

As mentioned in the methods section the scanning session consisted of two different experimental blocks of which only the block with ‘bivalent responses’ is of interest in the present paper. The sequence of blocks was balanced across subjects implicating that the bivalent response block was either the first one or the second one to be performed by the subjects. In order to check for potential transfer effects we included the between-subjects variable block sequence into the analysis.

We computed

Discussion

The aim of this study was to further elaborate how advance task preparation contributes to the flexibility of human behavior observed in task switching situations. Two different scenarios were sketched in the introduction which led to diverging predictions how advance task preparation should be reflected in BOLD activation. While both accounts agree that advance task preparation essentially means to establish the currently appropriate task set prior to the presentation of the target stimulus,

Conclusion

We presented an interpretation of the typical pattern of results obtained in fMRI studies of explicitly cued task switching which had been partly unexplained so far and which has often been thought to be incompatible with the typical pattern of behavioral results. The theoretical perspective we adopted is compatible with recent behavioral findings which (1) indicate that advance task preparation does not necessarily incorporate the re-configuration of a persistently activated previous task set

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development (GIF) Grant G-635-88.4/1999. The authors wish to thank Birte Forstmann for continuous and forwarding discussions about the topic and two anonymous reviewers for very helpful and constructive comments.

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