Structuralist mental representation of dual-action demands: Evidence for compositional coding from dual tasks with low cross-task dimensional overlap

Abstract

The present study asks how behavioral (dual-action) demands in dual tasks are mentally represented and whether changes in representation might govern practice-related dual-task performance improvements. Three different representation accounts were empirically tested based on the idea that dual-action demands required in a dual-task trial might be represented in different ways. According to a compositional (Structuralist) account, component tasks remain structurally intact when combined with another task. In contrast, a holistic (Gestalt) account posits that dual-action requirements in dual tasks are represented holistically and entirely distinct from its component action requirements. Finally, a contextual change account assumes that a change in context (e.g., from single- to dual-action requirement) generally impedes response retrieval, similar to repeating a response while the task context switches. To address this issue, we analyzed trial-by-trial effects in a single/dual switch paradigm (SDS paradigm, involving a randomized mix of single- and dual-task trials within blocks). Specifically, we analyzed performance in an extensive dual-task training setting (involving training sessions across several days) combining an auditory-vocal task and a visual-manual task. The results indicated that, throughout practice, nearly all relevant comparisons of performance between complete switch trials (e.g., between the two single tasks) and partial repetition trials (e.g., from dual to single task) revealed partial repetition benefits, that is, for both the auditory-vocal and the visual-manual task, and for both single- and dual-task performance analyses. Therefore, dual-action requirements in the present dual-task setting are mentally represented in a compositional, Structuralist fashion, probably due to low between-task dimensional overlap.