Confirming and Disconfirming Theories About Ideomotor Compatibility in Dual-Task Performance: A Reply to Greenwald (2005).

Abstract

Because small dual-task costs with ideomotor-compatible tasks do not necessarily indicate the absence of a bottleneck, M.-C. Lien, R. S. McCann, E. Ruthruff, and R. W. Proctor (2005) considered additional sources of evidence regarding bottleneck bypass. This evidence argued against complete bottleneck bypass and, instead, supported an engage-bottleneck-later model in which early bottleneck substages are bypassed but late substages are not. A. G. Greenwald (2005), however, contended that M.-C. Lien et al. did not use the procedures needed to produce complete bottleneck bypass and that a complete bottleneck bypass hypothesis, combined with additional assumptions, could explain their data. The authors contend that this disagreement stems from Greenwald's focus on confirming predictions of complete bottleneck bypass (small dual-task costs) without disconfirming predictions of bottleneck presence. In particular, Greenwald neglects to consider the possibility that a latent bottleneck limitation could also produce small dual-task costs.