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Psychological Research
Gepubliceerd in: Psychological Research 2/2015

01-03-2015 | Original Article

The benefit of no choice: goal-directed plans enhance perceptual processing

Auteurs: Markus Janczyk, Michael Dambacher, Maik Bieleke, Peter M. Gollwitzer

Gepubliceerd in: Psychological Research | Uitgave 2/2015

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Abstract

Choosing among different options is costly. Typically, response times are slower if participants can choose between several alternatives (free-choice) compared to when a stimulus determines a single correct response (forced-choice). This performance difference is commonly attributed to additional cognitive processing in free-choice tasks, which require time-consuming decisions between response options. Alternatively, the forced-choice advantage might result from facilitated perceptual processing, a prediction derived from the framework of implementation intentions. This hypothesis was tested in three experiments. Experiments 1 and 2 were PRP experiments and showed the expected underadditive interaction of the SOA manipulation and task type, pointing to a pre-central perceptual origin of the performance difference. Using the additive-factors logic, Experiment 3 further supported this view. We discuss the findings in the light of alternative accounts and offer potential mechanisms underlying performance differences in forced- and free-choice tasks.
vorige artikel Local feature suppression effect in face and non-face stimuli
volgende artikel A Stroop effect emerges in the processing of complex Chinese characters that contain a color-related radical
Voetnoten
1
Note that Berlyne (1957a, b) has already speculated about why participants do respond at all in free-choice tasks and why the respective RTs are longer than in forced-choice tasks. Briefly, he alluded to the idea of enhanced response competition in the case of free-choice tasks where no clear stimulus-induced bias exists. We return to this interpretation in the General Discussion and relate it to the present findings.
 
2
Of course, individuals could spontaneously (i.e., without explicit instruction) conceive free choices as stimulus–response links like “if an X appears, then I press the left key about half of the times”. However, research indicates that most individuals substantially benefit from the explicit instruction to use such stimulus–response links (for review, see Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006), suggesting that spontaneous planning does not play a critical role. Further, implementation intentions are the more effective the more clearly defined the linked behavior in the “then”-part is (Gollwitzer, 1993; Gollwitzer, Wieber, Meyers, & McCrea, 2010). The definiteness of the if–then plan is necessarily higher for forced- than for free-choice tasks in setups like the present study. Thus, one might in fact speak of stimulus–response links that are provided by forced-choice instructions. We do not deny this possibility and return to this view in the General Discussion. For now, however, as our reasoning was derived from the framework of implementation intentions, we prefer speaking of if–then plans.
 
3
In Berlyne’s (1957a) experiments both (forced-choice) stimuli were presented in a free-choice trial.
 
4
Due to a programming error, participants 1–16 of Experiment 1b had only 85 instead of 90 trials per block.
 
5
At least in Experiment 3, Berlyne (1957a) doubled the free-choice trials for analyses to reach a comparable numbers of trials.
 
6
This refers not only to the immediately preceding trial, but to the longer history of previous responses.
 
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Metagegevens
Titel
The benefit of no choice: goal-directed plans enhance perceptual processing
Auteurs
Markus Janczyk
Michael Dambacher
Maik Bieleke
Peter M. Gollwitzer
Publicatiedatum
01-03-2015
Uitgeverij
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Gepubliceerd in
Psychological Research / Uitgave 2/2015
Print ISSN: 0340-0727
Elektronisch ISSN: 1430-2772
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-014-0549-5

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