Abstract
With the aim of reducing cognitive control in task switching to simpler processes, researchers have proposed in a series of recent studies that there is little more to switching tasks than switching cues. The present study addresses three questions concerning this reduction hypothesis. First, does switching cues account for all relevant variance associated with switching tasks? Second, how well does this hypothesis generalize beyond the experimental procedure from which it was developed? Third, how well does this new procedure preserve relevant measures such as task-switch cost? The answers (no; not very; not very) suggest that task switching does not reduce to cue switching.
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This work was supported by ONR Grant N00014-06-1-0077. The author thanks Rich Carlson and two anonymous reviewers for their rigorous comments and suggestions for improvement.
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Altmann, E.M. Task switching is not cue switching. Psychon Bull Rev 13, 1016–1022 (2006). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03213918
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03213918