Crosstalk, Not Resource Competition, As a Source of Dual-task Costs: Evidence from Manipulating Stimulus-action Effect Conceptual Compatibility

Two related accounts of dual-task costs-multiple resource competition and crosstalk-explain why costs can be reduced when there is less overlap between the two tasks. However, distinguishing between competition for limited resources and crosstalk between concurrently performed operations has proven difficult. In the present study, we compared these two accounts with a dual-task paradigm in which participants were required to coordinate visual-manual and auditory-manual tasks with experimentally induced action effects. Critically, stimulus and response modalities were constant across conditions; what differed was the conceptual relationship between stimuli and action effects such that conceptual overlap was present either within or between tasks. We observed larger dual-task costs when related conceptual codes were present between tasks. We conclude that these results are best supported by the crosstalk account and that postresponse action effects are integrated into task representations engaged by central operations during response selection.