Research
The Relationship between Anxiety and Task Switching Ability
This study examined task switching ability as a function of anxiety. Participants with mild anxiety switched between emotion and age classification among faces. There were few important results: (i) Individuals with anxiety categorized facial emotion faster than facial age (ii)There was a larger switch cost for age than the emotion categorization (iii) Anxiety was a significant predictor of task switch costs. We discussed why anxious individuals showed a deficit in cognitive control of facial attributes.
Explicit and Implicit Task Switching between Facial Attributes
We examined task switching to different attributes of faces (gender, emotion, occupation) when an irrelevant aspect of the face could also change (e.g., the facial emotion could change when participants alternated every second trial between gender and occupation decisions). The change in the irrelevant attribute either coincided with a repetition or a switch in the explicit task. The results indicated disruptive effects of changing the facial emotion and gender of the face when it was irrelevant to the main task, but no effect of changing the occupation of the person.The data are consistent with the implicit processing of facial emotion and gender but not of higher-order semantic aspects of faces (the person’s occupation), unless those aspects are task-relevant.
Task Switching between Face Categorizations: An Advance Preparation Effect
This study examined how advance preparation modulates our ability to switch between face categorizations. The study included three switching experiments with different pairs of facial categorization tasks. In experiment 1, subjects switched between gender and occupation categorizations. Results showed a larger switch cost for the occupation task. In experiment 2, participants categorized emotion and gender categorizations. Results yielded a larger switch cost for the gender task. In experiment 3, subjects performed emotion and occupation categorization task. There was a larger switch cost for the occupation task. The overall results of experiments indicated that harder task yielded a larger switch cost than the easier task. Moreover, these switch costs can be reduced with sufficient preparation time. This study is the first investigation into advance preparation effect during switching between tasks of social significance. We discuss why asymmetries reduce with an advance preparation during face categorization tasks.
