Task Switching: A Research Study
According to this article, task switching is important in one’s daily life, but it slowly declines as one ages. The authors study the age differences in voluntary task switching (VTS) procedure and manipulate the time to prepare a task selection and the repetition of the current task. The study included 33 young adults, ages 18-24, and 10 older adults, ages 61-88. A computer and a serial response box was used to present the stimuli and the participants’ responses. The stimuli included digits 1 – 4 and 6 – 9. Each digit was 6 – 8 mm, and was presented in a light gray background in a 14-point courier bold font. Stimulus repetitions occurred randomly. The participants were asked to practice each task, magnitude and parity, singly for 24 trials
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a block. The magnitude task required participants to identify the digit as greater or less than 5, and the parity task required the participants to identify the digit as even or odd. The participants were instructed to switch between tasks during their blocks of trials. For three blocks of task switching, the participants were given a randomly selected task cue followed by a stimulus, and were told to perform the task associated with the cue. Participants then received the VTS instructions to perform each task randomly and equally. The VTS trials included a randomly selected response-to-stimulus interval (RSI) of 100, 500, 1000, or 5000 ms. The participants, both young and old, were to respond to the task using their index and middle fingers. The results of the study shows that the older adult’s reaction times (RT) for the task switching in the several RSI were slower than those of the younger adults, but they were more accurate when switching tasks compared to younger participants. There was no difference in accuracy when the participants were asked to repeat the task. The authors noted that the older participants were just as likely to switch tasks following a stimulus response as a stimulus change. Older participants were thought to have respond slower if they were using stimulus repetitions as a reminder to switch tasks than task switching before a stimulus. This, however, was true for both ages. The reaction times for both younger and older adults were only influenced by the stimulus repetition when the task was repeated. Through the RT results, older adults were less likely to switch tasks in a voluntary switching multitask environment, but they are more accurate in their tasks. The authors of this study hypothesize that training would free up attentional resources for a secondary auditory task.
This training could be through the use of video games. This study uses the video game, Space Fortress (SF), with cognitive tasks components to support the hypothesis. SF was created as a tool for studying training strategies and learning, in which the players are required to focus attention on several overlapping tasks that represent real-world situations and tasks. This study includes both the continuous and discrete, the event-related, aspects of the game. The brain activity of the effects of playing SF were measured using an electroencephalogram (EEG) before and after the game. The event-related brain potential (ERP) and event-related spectral perturbations (ERSP) were two analyses used to analyze the brain activity associated with the discrete task events. This study involved 39 participants, who reported playing less than 3 hours of video games a week in the past 2 years, were right-handed, and had normal to corrected-to-normal vision. Before the experiment, the participants watched two short movies that explained the details and the most important rules of the game. After the movies, the participants were asked to familiarize themselves with SF, and then had a pre-training EEG session. Participants were to practice the game for 20 hours and return for their post-training EEG session. During the EEG training sessions, participants were to perform auditory oddball task without the game, and then to perform the auditory oddball task with the then 3-minutes-long games. The participants were asked to silently count the high tones and report the total at the end of each
game. The SF game required participants to navigate a ship in a frictionless environment with a main foal to destroy the Space Fortress, which is located at the center of the screen, as many times with the ship’s missiles while avoiding damage to the ship. The Space Fortress also defends itself by shooting the ship. If the player’s ship is hit four times, it is destroyed and the points are lost. To make the game more difficult, mines appear on the screed at regular intervals, and it may destroy the ship if the ship comes into contact with the mines. The fortress cannot be damaged or destroyed when the mines appear. To respond to the mines, the player has to remember three letters that identify foe mines, which were given to the players at the beginning of the game. Through the various analyses, a significance improvements in performance were found with training for the SF game and the secondary oddball task. The electrophysiological measures, which includes the ERP and ERSP, showed that the participants were able to allocate additional attention to the secondary task as their skill in the primary task improved. An automatization of the game subtasks increased. This shows that there is a possibility that complex game training may also increase overall resource capacity, which benefits secondary task performance without compromising the demanding primary tasks. The game itself demanded a higher level of control process, which is seen to activate the frontal area of the brain, which is associated with multitasking. The increase in delta and theta waves and the decrease in alpha waves shows the attentional engagement levels. The alpha activity represents the control of attention one gives to a particular task. SF training led to an increase in the response to rare tones in the delta and alpha frequency bands in the P3, which is measured by the electrophysiological measures. This shows that through training, which was SF in this study, provides a better attentional response to the secondary auditory task, which was the auditory oddball task in this study.
a block. The magnitude task required participants to identify the digit as greater or less than 5, and the parity task required the participants to identify the digit as even or odd. The participants were instructed to switch between tasks during their blocks of trials. For three blocks of task switching, the participants were given a randomly selected task cue followed by a stimulus, and were told to perform the task associated with the cue. Participants then received the VTS instructions to perform each task randomly and equally. The VTS trials included a randomly selected response-to-stimulus interval (RSI) of 100, 500, 1000, or 5000 ms. The participants, both young and old, were to respond to the task using their index and middle fingers. The results of the study shows that the older adult’s reaction times (RT) for the task switching in the several RSI were slower than those of the younger adults, but they were more accurate when switching tasks compared to younger participants. There was no difference in accuracy when the participants were asked to repeat the task. The authors noted that the older participants were just as likely to switch tasks following a stimulus response as a stimulus change. Older participants were thought to have respond slower if they were using stimulus repetitions as a reminder to switch tasks than task switching before a stimulus. This, however, was true for both ages. The reaction times for both younger and older adults were only influenced by the stimulus repetition when the task was repeated. Through the RT results, older adults were less likely to switch tasks in a voluntary switching multitask environment, but they are more accurate in their tasks. The authors of this study hypothesize that training would free up attentional resources for a secondary auditory task.
This training could be through the use of video games. This study uses the video game, Space Fortress (SF), with cognitive tasks components to support the hypothesis. SF was created as a tool for studying training strategies and learning, in which the players are required to focus attention on several overlapping tasks that represent real-world situations and tasks. This study includes both the continuous and discrete, the event-related, aspects of the game. The brain activity of the effects of playing SF were measured using an electroencephalogram (EEG) before and after the game. The event-related brain potential (ERP) and event-related spectral perturbations (ERSP) were two analyses used to analyze the brain activity associated with the discrete task events. This study involved 39 participants, who reported playing less than 3 hours of video games a week in the past 2 years, were right-handed, and had normal to corrected-to-normal vision. Before the experiment, the participants watched two short movies that explained the details and the most important rules of the game. After the movies, the participants were asked to familiarize themselves with SF, and then had a pre-training EEG session. Participants were to practice the game for 20 hours and return for their post-training EEG session. During the EEG training sessions, participants were to perform auditory oddball task without the game, and then to perform the auditory oddball task with the then 3-minutes-long games. The participants were asked to silently count the high tones and report the total at the end of each
game. The SF game required participants to navigate a ship in a frictionless environment with a main foal to destroy the Space Fortress, which is located at the center of the screen, as many times with the ship’s missiles while avoiding damage to the ship. The Space Fortress also defends itself by shooting the ship. If the player’s ship is hit four times, it is destroyed and the points are lost. To make the game more difficult, mines appear on the screed at regular intervals, and it may destroy the ship if the ship comes into contact with the mines. The fortress cannot be damaged or destroyed when the mines appear. To respond to the mines, the player has to remember three letters that identify foe mines, which were given to the players at the beginning of the game. Through the various analyses, a significance improvements in performance were found with training for the SF game and the secondary oddball task. The electrophysiological measures, which includes the ERP and ERSP, showed that the participants were able to allocate additional attention to the secondary task as their skill in the primary task improved. An automatization of the game subtasks increased. This shows that there is a possibility that complex game training may also increase overall resource capacity, which benefits secondary task performance without compromising the demanding primary tasks. The game itself demanded a higher level of control process, which is seen to activate the frontal area of the brain, which is associated with multitasking. The increase in delta and theta waves and the decrease in alpha waves shows the attentional engagement levels. The alpha activity represents the control of attention one gives to a particular task. SF training led to an increase in the response to rare tones in the delta and alpha frequency bands in the P3, which is measured by the electrophysiological measures. This shows that through training, which was SF in this study, provides a better attentional response to the secondary auditory task, which was the auditory oddball task in this study.