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23-04-2018 | Original Article

Starting or finishing sooner? Sequencing preferences in object transfer tasks

Auteurs: Lisa R. Fournier, Alexandra M. Stubblefield, Brian P. Dyre, David A. Rosenbaum

Gepubliceerd in: Psychological Research | Uitgave 8/2019

Abstract

When tasks are performed, other tasks are postponed, at least implicitly. Little is known about how task sequencing is determined. We examined task sequencing in object transfer tasks for which either task could easily or logically come before the other. The task was to transfer ping pong balls from two buckets into a bowl. To perform the task, participants walked down a corridor, picked up one of two buckets (their choice), carried it to the end of the corridor, transferred the balls from the bucket into a bowl, carried the bucket back to the start position, and then did the same with the other remaining bucket. As in an earlier study where just one of two buckets had to be carried to the end of a corridor (Rosenbaum et al. Psychol Sci 25(7):1487–1496, 2014), participants showed a marked tendency to start with the near bucket. The near-bucket preference was modulated only to a small extent by the number of balls that could be emptied into the bowl. The relative lack of importance of the number of balls to be transferred (to finish the first task more quickly or to get closer to the end goal of transferring all balls into the bowl) was further demonstrated by the fact that the effect of the number of balls to be transferred did not depend on how the emptying was supposed to occur (by pouring the balls or placing the balls one at a time into the bowl), or by whether the instruction focused on filling the bowl or emptying the buckets. The results suggest that the near-bucket preference reflects a strong inclination to start the task (sub-goal) as soon as possible rather than complete the task (sub-goal) as soon as possible. Starting the task as soon as possible may be related to the affordance triggered by the sight of the near object or by the freedom to perform without having to inhibit a reach for a bucket when the performer is empty-handed. Starting a task sooner may free up cognitive resources for subsequent decision-making.

vorige artikel Correction to: Gestalt grouping cues can improve filtering performance in visual working memory

volgende artikel Task-set control, chunking, and hierarchical timing in rhythm production

The possible dynamics of ordering decisions have been modeled in detail and with considerable success (Botvinick & Plaut, 2004; Cooper & Shallice, 2000; Norman & Shallice, 1980, 1986), but with presupposed (normative) orders whose violations are odd or even pathological (Shallice, 1982; Schwartz et al., 1998). The focus here is on optional ordering, a topic that has been studied since Panini proposed his Law of Syllable Number (also known as Panini’s Law). For a review of and evidence for the psychological reality of this rule and related ones, see Pinker and Birdsong (1979) and MacDonald (2013). The latter author has proposed an “easy first” principle of language production which is not restricted to frozen idioms. Studies that have examined task ordering in the context of experiments on the psychological refractory period have made analogous conclusions; see Leonhard et al. (2011) and Ruiz Fernández et al. (2011; 2013).

There was a non-significant trend suggesting that the framing of the instructions may influence the interaction of right bucket relative distance and ball ratio in the pour group only. However, this trend did not compromise any of the interpretations of the effects above, and suggested that the probability of picking up the right bucket first trended toward an increase for the “fill bowl” instruction when the right bucket contained a larger number of balls relative to when the right and left bucket contained an equivalent number of balls. Importantly, we found no evidence that the “fill bowl” or “empty buckets” instructions differentially affected the parameter estimates for the one-by-one group. For this group, the instruction to “empty buckets” did not lead to a preference in selecting the bucket with the smaller (vs. larger) number of balls first, as the bucket with the smaller number of balls could more quickly satisfy the means of the goal to “empty the buckets”. Thus, the framing of the instructions did not change the outcome of the study.

Both of the women who discovered these effects, Bluma Zeigarnik and Maria Ovsiankina, were students of the Gestalt psychologist, Kurt Lewin, whose field theory they sought to test (or validate). According to field theory (Lewin, 1935), actors (people or animals) are drawn toward teleologically relevant attractors in the environment and are drawn away from teleologically relevant repellers in the environment. The findings from the present experiment, and the results of Rosenbaum et al (2014), can be viewed as consistent with Lewin’s field theory in that participants in both studies were apparently drawn to the nearest goal-relevant object.

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Titel: Starting or finishing sooner? Sequencing preferences in object transfer tasks
Auteurs: Lisa R. Fournier
Alexandra M. Stubblefield
Brian P. Dyre
David A. Rosenbaum
Publicatiedatum: 23-04-2018
Uitgeverij: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Gepubliceerd in: Psychological Research / Uitgave 8/2019
Print ISSN: 0340-0727
Elektronisch ISSN: 1430-2772
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-018-1022-7

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