Practice-related reduction of dual-task costs under conditions of a manual-pedal response combination

Abstract

Severe dual-task costs emerge when two tasks are performed at the same time. Schumacher, Seymour, Glass, Kieras, and Meyer (2001) showed a complete reduction of dual-task costs after extensive dual-task practice with a visual-manual (VM) task and an auditory-verbal (AV) task. First, we replicated these findings and found task conditions sufficient to achieve a high level of dual-task cost reduction (Experiment 1). Using these conditions, we tested whether the Schumacher et al. findings generalise to a different dual-task situation, in which participants practised a VM task and an auditory-pedal (AP) task (VM-AP) conjointly (Experiment 2). In the VM-AP task situation we found reduced dual-task costs after practice. Dual-task costs, however, remained on a high level after eight sessions of practice and also when extending practice to 12 sessions. No single participant showed evidence for time sharing in the VM-AP dual task. These results suggest that the finding of complete dual-task cost reduction does not generalise to the VM-AP task combination used in the present study. We discuss different factors potentially relevant for the observation of persisting dual-task costs over practice in the VM-AP task.

Keywords:

• Dual task
• Manual-pedal
• Practice

Acknowledgements

The present research was supported by a grant of the German Research Foundation to TS and PF (DFG Schu 1397/ 3-2). The authors wish to thank Mei-Ching Lien and Eric Ruthruff for helpful comments on a previous version of the manuscript. We are grateful to Franziska Plessow and Marina Palazova for their help in collecting data.