Abstract
Recent findings suggesting that switch costs in the task-cuing paradigm are largely attributable to a change in the task-indicating cue have been interpreted in terms of a priming model of task-switch costs (Logan & Bundesen, 2003). According to this explanation, participants do not actually switch task sets, but merely use a cue-stimulus compound to disambiguate competing response tendencies associated with bivalent stimuli. Here, we report an event-related potential (ERP) experiment that provides evidence against this notion. In a paradigm with a 2:1 mapping between cues and tasks, we show that cue-switch and task-switch effects are dissociable on a neurophysiological level, indicating that task switching is more than a switch in the task-indicating cue. Moreover, a systematic analysis of the ERPs during the cue-stimulus interval suggests that updating processes can run in advance, before the stimulus is presented.
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This research was supported by Grant Ro 529/17-2 from the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Max-Planck award assigned to F.R.
Note—This article was accepted by the previous editorial team, when John Jonides was Editor.
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Jost, K., Mayr, U. & Rösler, F. Is task switching nothing but cue priming? Evidence from ERPs. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 8, 74–84 (2008). https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.8.1.74
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.8.1.74