Dreisbach, G. 1 & Wenke, D. 2, 3
1 University of Regensburg
2 Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig
3 Ghent University
Task sets in terms of two-choice categorization rules help shielding against distraction from irrelevant stimulus attributes. During task switching, this task shielding should temporarily be relaxed in order to prevent the perseveration of the previous task, on the downside making the system more vulnerable towards the intrusion of irrelevant information. Participants had to switch between a digit and a letter categorization task. An irrelevant stimulus feature (Experiment 1: Color, Experiment 2: Font) varied randomly, orthogonal to the task. The presence or absence of an interaction of the irrelevant feature (switch vs. repetition) and the response (switch vs. repetition) was taken as evidence for the absence or presence of task shielding, respectively. Replicating previous results, no feature X response interaction was found on task repetitions, indicating successful task shielding. On task switches however, the feature X response interaction was significant, reflecting the assumed relaxation of task shielding during task switching.