An interactive conception of the psychological refractory period effect
Abstract
An interactive conception of the psychological refractory period (PRP) effect is proposed on the basis of Hommel's (1998) two-process approach to account for compatibility effects in the PRP task. The interactive conception account assumes that response selection has two components. One component is stimulus-response (S-R) translation, which can occur automatically and simultaneously for both tasks. The other component is final response selection, which is the locus of the bottleneck and can process only one task at a time. The account suggests that between-task crosstalk and noncurrent-task response association have strong impacts on S-R translation when there is a contingency between the two tasks. Six PRP experiments were conducted: The first three experiments contained no contingency between the two tasks, but the last three did. Greenwald and Shulman's (1973) S-R compatible and ideomotor compatible tasks were used in Experiments 1–3, with both responses (R1 and R2) being required in Experiments 1–2 and only R2 in Experiment 3. The interactive conception predicts that the PRP effect should be obtained in Experiments 1 and 2 but not in Experiment 3 because the selection of R2 has to wait until the selection of R1 is completed. A PRP effect was evident in Experiments 1 and 2 but not Experiment 3. In Experiment 4, the overlap of the color between the two stimuli was manipulated and participants were instructed to respond to S2 only. A PRP effect was obtained for the overlap condition and a small, but significant, PRP effect for the no overlap condition. Experiments 5 and 6 examined the effect of S1–S2 correlation (high, low, and neutral), as well as R1–R2 spatial correspondence in Experiment 6, on the PRP effect. An overadditive interaction of correlation and SOA was obtained for both experiments. A comparison between Experiments 5 and 6 showed no difference in the PRP effect obtained for the correlation conditions. Results of these experiments are in agreement with the interactive conception of the PRP effect, in which the contingency between two tasks affects S-R translation processing, which is distinct from the processing of final response selection.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Proctor, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Cognitive therapy|Psychology|Experiments
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