Steinhauser, M.
Department of Psychology, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany
When participants rapidly switch between tasks that share the same stimuli and responses, task confusions can occur. The present study investigated whether these task confusions result from failures of endogenous control (i.e., task preparation) or from failures of exogenous control (i.e., stimulus-induced task conflicts). In a series of task-switching experiments, the frequency of task confusions was estimated by considering distractor errors which result when participants erroneously respond to a distractor stimulus associated with the alternative task. The efficiency of exogenous control was manipulated by varying the temporal order of target and distractor presentation. The efficiency of endogenous control was manipulated by varying the time available for preparing the task in advance. The data show that only the efficiency of exogenous control but not the efficiency of endogenous control influenced the proportion of distractor errors. This suggests that task confusions are more related to failures in exogenous control.