Dual tasking can reduce interference by incidentally improving stimuli selection

TELGA, MAÏKA; BARTTFELD, PABLO; LUNA, FERNANDO GABRIEL; LUPIÁÑEZ, JUAN

Madrid

Congreso; First Joint Congress of the SEPEX, SEPNECA and AIP experimental; 2018

The "proactive" vs. "reactive" dual view of cognitive control considers the former as top-down and the latter as bottom-up control mechanisms. Thus, in a flanker task, properties of stimuli grouping distractors with the target lead to larger interference and subsequently the need of reactive control. On the other hand, loading working memory with a dual task might increase interference due to the reduced allocation of proactive control. In the current study we present data from two experiments, which show a rather more complex pattern. Dual tasking did not systematically lead to increased interference, but rather produced a similar effect of stimulus driven grouping, either increasing or decreasing interference, depending on the nature of the dual task. Indeed, interference was increased when the dual task drew attention to the grouping dimension, but reduced when attention was drawn to an orthogonal dimension, thus breaking grouping of the target with the distractors.