Interference in the Shared-Stroop Task: A Comparison of Self- and Other-Monitoring

Co-acting participants represent and integrate each other’s actions, even when they are not required to monitor one another. However, monitoring the actions of a partner is an important component of successful interactions, and particularly of linguistic interactions. Moreover, monitoring others may rely on similar mechanisms to those that are involved in self-monitoring. In order to investigate the effect of monitoring on shared linguistic representations, we combined a monitoring task with the shared Stroop task. In the shared Stroop task, one participant named the colour of words in one colour (e.g., red) while ignoring stimuli in the other colour (e.g., green); the other participant either named the colour of words in the other colour or did not respond. Crucially, participants either had to provide feedback about the correctness of their partner’s response (Experiment 3) or did not (Experiment 2). The results showed that interference was greater when both participants responded than when they did not, but only when partners provided feedback. We argue that feedback increased joint task interference because in order to monitor their partner, participants had to represent their target utterance, and this representation interfered with self-monitoring of their own utterance.

Memory precision for salient distractors decreases with learned suppression

Attention operates as a cognitive gate that selects sensory information for entry intomemory and awareness (Driver, 2001). Under many circumstances, the selected information is task-relevant and important to remember, but it is also well known that perceptually salient non- target objects will capture attention and induce awareness even when they are irrelevant (Adams and Gaspelin, 2020). Recent studies have shown that task interference by salient distractors diminishes after repeated exposures, but the relationship between suppression and memory remain unclear. If attentional suppression (indicated by a reduced capture costs) occurs at the sensory level and prevents readout to other cognitive processes, one might expect memory and awareness to dimmish commensurate with improved suppression. Here we test this hypothesis by measuring memory precision, awareness, and confidence of salient non-targets over repetitions as capture costs are reduced. Our results show that better attentional suppression is accompanied by reductions in memory precision and awareness, suggesting that reductions in capture costs reflect a reduction in the likelihood of the distractor entering memory and awareness.

Practice Mediates Bidirectional Dual-Task Interference When Performing a Novel Sequential Nonword Repetition Task

Introduction The current study examined the extent to which practice amount mediates dual-task interference patterns associated with concurrent performance of a novel speech task and attention-demanding visuomotor task. Method A Sequential Nonword Repetition Task was used to examine the effect of practice on interference associated with concurrent performance of a Visuomotor Pursuit Task. Twenty-five young adult participants were assigned to either an Extended Practice Group or a Limited Practice Group and performed a novel Sequential Nonword Repetition Task in isolation and while performing a concurrent visuomotor pursuit rotor task. Results Participants in the Limited Practice Group who were afforded a limited amount of practice exhibited dual-task interference (i.e., dual-task performance reductions) for both the speech and visuomotor tasks (i.e., bidirectional dual-task interference). Conversely, participants in the Extended Practice Group who were afforded extended practice exhibited little-to-no observable dual-task interference on the nonword repetition task. Conclusion Data from the current investigation suggest that the amount of initial practice mediates the degree of dual-task interference observed when a novel speech production task is performed with an attention-demanding Visuomotor Pursuit Task. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.14608071