Investigating Perfect Timesharing: The Relationship between IM-Compatible Tasks and Dual-Task Performance

Why are dual-task costs reduced with ideomotor (IM) compatible tasks (Greenwald & Shulman, 1973; Lien, Proctor & Allen, 2002)? In the present experiments, we first examine three different measures of single-task performance (pure single-task blocks, mixed blocks, and long stimulus onset asynchrony [SOA] trials in dual-task blocks) and two measures of dual-task performance (simultaneous stimulus presentation blocks and simultaneous stimulus presentation trials in blocks with mixed SOAs), and show that these different measures produce different estimates of the cost. Next we examine whether the near elimination of costs can be explained by assuming that one or both of the tasks bypasses capacity-limited central operations. The results indicate that both tasks must be IM-compatible to nearly eliminate the dual-task costs, suggesting that the relationship between the tasks plays a critical role in overlapping performance. (Contains 1 table, 6 figures and 8 footnotes.)