Abstract
The aim of the current study was to investigate the effects of postural control demands on cognitive control processes in concurrent auditory-manual task switching. To this end, two experiments were conducted using an auditory cued task-switching paradigm with different postural control demands (sitting vs. standing). This design allowed us to explore the effect of postural control on switch costs, mixing costs, and the between-task congruency effect. In addition, we varied the cue-based task preparation in Experiment 1 to examine whether preparation processes are independent of additional postural control demands or if the motor control processes required by the postural control demands interfere with task-specific cognitive preparation processes. The results show that we replicated the standard effects in task switching, such as switch costs, mixing costs, and congruency effects in both experiments as well as a preparation-based reduction of these costs in Experiment 1. Importantly, we demonstrated a selective effect of postural control demands in task switching in terms of an increased congruency effect when standing as compared to sitting. This finding suggests that particularly in situations that require keeping two tasks active in parallel, the postural control demands have an influence on the degree to which cognitive control enforces a more serial (shielded) mode or a somewhat less selective attention mode that allows for more parallel processing of concurrently held active task rules.
Highlights
Postural control is crucial in daily life, we depend on it despite the fact that it seems to happen rather effortlessly and automatically
An alternative approach that we took in the present study is to investigate the effects of postural control demands on cognitive processing by using a paradigm, which provides a variety of more specific measures of cognitive control and cognitive flexibility
We were interested to see whether cue-based task preparation processes are independent of additional postural control demands or if the motor control processes required by the postural control demands interfere with task-specific cognitive preparation processes
Summary
Postural control is crucial in daily life, we depend on it despite the fact that it seems to happen rather effortlessly and automatically. Studies show significant attentional requirements related to postural control (for a review see Woollacott and Shumway-Cook, 2002) as it refers to the control over a body’s position in space for the purpose of balance and orientation (Woollacott and Shumway-Cook, 2002) and requires the dynamic integration of visual, proprioceptive, and vestibular sensory information (Huxhold et al, 2006). Central aspects of postural control research are the influence of individual preconditions such as age (Donker et al, 2007) or proficiency in balance-related skills and abilities (Krampe et al, 2014), and attentional requirements (Woollacott and Shumway-Cook, 2002). Even though postural control seems to be automatic and effortless, it has been shown that even sitting requires a certain amount of postural motor control (Kerr et al, 1985). It has long been presumed that cognition and motor functions share and compete for limited attentional resources (Woollacott, 2000).
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