
Iring KochRWTH Aachen University · Institute for Psychology
Iring Koch
Prof. Dr.
About
341
Publications
75,381
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
11,763
Citations
Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (341)
In dual-task situations, two stimuli are presented in rapid succession, requiring participants to perform two tasks simultaneously. Prior studies suggested that when two tasks are performed simultaneously, information about the identity of the two tasks is represented in a joint cognitive representation, referred to as the task-pair set. This evide...
Introduction
Several studies showed that task interruptions at high mental workload moments are more harmful than task interruptions at low mental workload moments. In the present study, we used a theory-driven approach to define the mental workload during primary-task execution and to examine the effects of the interruption timing on primary-task...
The human experience demands seamless attentional switches between sensory modalities. Aging raises questions about how declines in auditory and visual processing affect cross-modal attention switching. This study used a cued cross-modal attention-switching paradigm where visual and auditory stimuli were simultaneously presented on either spatially...
Dual tasks are a common phenomenon in everyday life. In dual-task contexts, we perform two-component tasks in temporal overlap, which usually results in impaired performance in one or both of these component tasks relative to single-task contexts. Numerous studies have examined dual-task interference at the level of response selection, but only a f...
In task switching, processing a task cue is thought to activate the corresponding task representation (“task set”), thereby allowing for advance task preparation. However, the contribution of preparatory processes to the emergence of n−2 repetition costs as index of task set inhibition processes is debated. The present study investigated whether me...
Previous studies on crossmodal visual-auditory attention switching using a spatial discrimination task showed performance costs when the target modality changed relative to when it repeated. The present study (n = 42 for each age group) examined age-related changes in crossmodal attention switching by asking young (age range 19 to 30 years old) and...
Cognates are studied in many psychological studies of bilingual language processing. Despite their frequent use, there is no clear operationalized definition of what constitutes a cognate. We conducted a literature search in three major journals to better understand how cognate status is typically defined and operationalized. In these journals, we...
Task-switching experiments have shown that the ‘switch cost’ (poorer performance for task switches than for repetitions) is smaller when the probability of a switch is high (e.g., 0.75) than when it is low (e.g., 0.25). Some theoretical accounts explain this effect in terms of top-down control deployed in advance of the task cue (‘pre-cue reconfigu...
Dual-tasks at the memory encoding stage have been shown to decrease recall performance and impair concurrent task performance. In contrast, studies on the effect of dual-tasks at the memory retrieval stage observed mixed results. Which cognitive mechanisms are underlying this dual-task interference is still an unresolved question. In the present st...
Speaking two or more languages shows bilingual flexibility, but flexible switching requires language control and often incurs performance costs. We examined inhibitory control assessing n − 2 repetition costs when switching three languages (L1 [German], L2 [English], L3 [French]). These costs denote worse performance in n − 2 repetitions (e.g., L2–...
Cognitive task control can be examined in task-switching studies. Performance costs in task switches are usually smaller with compatible stimulus-response modality mappings (visual-manual and auditory-vocal) than with incompatible mappings (visual-vocal and auditory-manual). Modality compatibility describes the modality match of sensory input and o...
Switching auditory attention to one of two (or more) simultaneous voices incurs a substantial performance overhead. Whether/when this voice ‘switch cost’ reduces when the listener has opportunity to prepare in silence is not clear–the findings on the effect of preparation on the switch cost range from (near) null to substantial. We sought to determ...
The literature on action control is rife with differences in terminology. This consensus statement contributes shared definitions for perception-action inte- gration concepts as informed by the framework of event coding.
Recent task-switching studies highlighted the presence of feature binding processes. These studies documented that even a task-irrelevant feature (the context, henceforth) may be bound with the task and the response in each trial. When the context repeated in the following trial, it supposedly retrieved the bound features, causing benefits when the...
Responses are slower in two-choice tasks when either a previous stimulus feature or the previous response repeats than when all features repeat or all features change. Current views of action control posit that such partial repetition costs (PRCs) index the time to update a prior “binding” between a stimulus feature and the response or to resolve p...
The question of how behavior is represented in the mind lies at the core of psychology as the science of mind and behavior. While a long-standing research tradition has established two opposing fundamental views of perceptual representation, Structuralism and Gestalt psychology, we test both accounts with respect to action representation: Are multi...
Referendums allow people to participate in political decision-making. However, they also come with the challenge of presenting complex issues to the electorate in a concise and comprehensible way. In order to simplify the decision-making process, referendum questions are often tailored to yes/no response options. In comparison, the UK European Unio...
In task switching, response repetitions (RRs) usually yield performance benefits as compared to response switches, but only when the task also repeats. When the task switches, RR benefits vanish or even turn into costs, yielding an interaction between repeating versus switching the task and the response (the RR effect ). Different theoretical accou...
In conflict tasks, congruency effects are thought to reflect attentional control mechanisms needed to counteract response conflict elicited by incongruent stimuli. Although congruency effects are well-replicable experimentally, recent studies have evidenced low correlations between congruency effects measured across different paradigms, leading to...
Modality-compatible stimulus–response mappings (e.g., responding vocally to an auditory stimulus and manually to a visual stimulus) are often easier to perform than modality-incompatible sets (reversed modality mappings). Here, we investigate sequential, trial-to-trial, modulations of modality compatibility effects. By reanalyzing a previous experi...
We examined how flexibly we plan sequences of actions when we switch between multiple action sequences. Mastering a sequential skill is assumed to involve integrating successive actions into groups known as chunks that can be efficiently planned and smoothly executed. Chunking is suggested by gains in planning efficiency for long compared to short...
Driving at an inappropriate speed is a major accident cause in the EU. Understanding the underlying sensory mechanisms can help to reduce speed and increase traffic safety. The present study investigated the effect of visuospatial stimuli on speed perception using an adaptive countermeasure to speeding based on a manipulation of optic flow. We adde...
To examine whether an ongoing primary task is inhibited when switching to an interruption task, we implemented the n − 2 backward inhibition paradigm into a task-interruption setting. In two experiments, subjects performed two primary tasks (block-wise manipulation) consisting of a predefined sequence of three subtasks. The primary tasks differed r...
A prominent feature of cognitive control is that its deployment is regulated depending on the environmental circumstances. Control upregulation has been widely documented in response-conflict paradigms where congruency effects are reduced both following incongruent trials, and in blocks where incongruent trials are the majority. In two preregistere...
Studies on sequence learning usually focus on single, isolated stimuli that are presented sequentially. For example, in the serial reaction time (RT) task, stimuli are either presented in a predictable sequence or in a random sequence, and better performance with the predictable sequence is taken as evidence for sequence-specific learning. Yet, lit...
Sequence learning in serial reaction time (SRT) tasks is an established, lab-based experimental paradigm to study acquisition and transfer of skills based on the detection of predictable regularities in stimulus and motor response sequences. Participants learn a sequence of targets and responses to these targets by associating the responses with su...
In 2007 and 2008, Yu and Smith published their seminal studies on cross-situational word learning (CSWL) in adults and infants, showing that word-object-mappings can be acquired from distributed statistics despite in-the-moment uncertainty. Since then, the CSWL paradigm has been used extensively to better understand (statistical) word learning in d...
While statistical word learning has been the focus of many studies on monolinguals, it has received little attention in bilinguals. The results of existing studies on statistical word learning in bilinguals are inconsistent, with some research reporting a bilingual advantage over monolinguals but others finding no difference between groups. Thus, o...
While language switching of bilinguals has been investigated extensively in the spoken domain, there has been little research on switching while writing. The factors that impact written language switching may differ from those that impact language switching while speaking. Thus, the study’s goal was to test to what extent phonological and/or orthog...
In the present study, we used a modeling approach for measuring task conflict in task switching, assessing the probability of selecting the correct task via multinomial processing tree (MPT) modeling. With this method, task conflict and response conflict can be independently assessed as the probability of selecting the correct task and the probabil...
Response repetitions aid performance when a task repeats but impair performance when a task switches. Although this interaction is robust, theoretical accounts remain controversial. Here, we used an un-cued, predictable task-switching paradigm with univalent targets to explore whether a simple bias to switch the response when the task switches can...
Process interference or sharing of attentional resources between cognitive tasks and balance control during upright standing has been well documented. Attentional costs increase with greater balancing demands of a balance activity, for example in standing compared to sitting. The traditional approach for analyzing balance control using posturograph...
A core characteristic of auditory stimuli is that they develop over time. Referring to the event segmentation theory, we assume that the on- and offset of a contextual sound indicates the start and end of an event. As a consequence, stimuli and responses appearing within a common auditory context may be integrated more likely/strongly, forming so-c...
Sequence learning in serial reaction time (SRT) tasks is an established, lab-based experimental paradigm to study acquisition and transfer of skill based on the detection of predictable stimulus and motor response sequences. Participants learn a stimulus sequence by associating their responses to the targets with the subsequently presented targets...
We used a variant of cued auditory task switching to investigate task preparation and its relation to response-set overlap. Previous studies found increased interference with overlapping response sets across tasks relative to non-overlapping motor response sets. In the present experiments, participants classified either pitch or loudness of a simpl...
A growing body of research suggests that basic numerical abilities such as number magnitude and number parity processing are influenced by cognitive control. So far, however, evidence for number processing being influenced by cognitive control came primarily from observed adaptations to stimulus set characteristics (e.g., ratio or order of specific...
Inappropriate speed is a main cause of accidents. Drivers are often unaware of potential risks due to inadequate speed. To prevent dangerous situations, we need to understand perceptual factors influencing human speed perception. Due to the prominent role of vision in driving, we examined the effect of visuo-spatial stimuli on speed based on the op...
Research in attention and action control produced substantial evidence suggesting the presence of feature binding. This study explores the binding of task-irrelevant context features in cued task switching. We predicted that repeating a context feature in trial n retrieves the trial n - 1 episode. Consequently, performance should improve when the r...
This study reports the results of 4 experiments that addressed whether the domains of deictic time and number exert a cross-domain link. Such a link would be consistent with A Theory of Magnitude (i.e., ATOM). In contrast, no link between the two domains would support the conceptual metaphor theory (CMT), which assumes that each domain is only link...
Differentiating errors on the basis of the distinct cognitive mechanisms that may have generated them has provided neuropsychologists with useful diagnostic tools. For example, perseverative errors arising from the inability of the patient to set a new criterion for responding are considered one of the hallmarks of cognitive inflexibility. Similarl...
In everyday life humans are confronted with changing environmental demands. In order to act successfully and achieve intended goals, action control is required. A recent approach, the Binding and Retrieval in Action Control (BRAC) framework, attempts to provide an overarching perspective on action control. Based on basic principles such as binding...
People respond more slowly in two-choice tasks when either a previous stimulus feature or the previous response repeats in partial repetition trials than when (a) both repeat in complete repetition trials or (b) both alternate in complete alternation trials. The binding account posits that such partial repetition costs index a memory-retrieval conf...
Actions we perform every day generate perceivable outcomes with both spatial and temporal features. According to the ideomotor principle, we plan our actions by anticipating the outcomes, but this principle does not directly address how sequential movements are influenced by different outcomes. We examined how sequential action planning is influenc...
Sequence learning in serial reaction time tasks (SRTT) is an established, lab-based experimental paradigm to study acquisition and transfer of skill based on the detection of predictable stimulus and motor response sequences. Sequence learning has been mainly studied in key presses using visual target stimuli and is demonstrated by better performan...
Evidence suggests that the features of a stimulus and the actions performed on it are bound together into a coherent mental representation of the episode, which is retrieved from memory upon reencountering at least one of these features. Effects of such binding and retrieval processes emerge in action control, such as in multitasking situations lik...
To achieve fluent language processing as a bilingual, a dominant theoretical framework assumes that the nontarget language is inhibited. This assumption is based on several empirical effects that are typically explained with inhibitory control. In the current article, we discuss four prominent effects linked to bilingual inhibition in language prod...
Multilinguals often switch between the languages they speak. One open question is to what extent they can use anticipatory—or proactive—language control to reduce interference from non-target languages during language switching. In three experiments, unbalanced German-English bilinguals (N1 = 24; N2 = 35; N3 = 37) named pictures in their L1 or L2 i...
There is strong evidence that stimuli and responses are bound together in a direct ('binary') fashion into an episodic representation called 'stimulus-response episode' (or 'event file'). However, in an auditory negative priming study in which participants were required to respond to the target stimulus and to ignore the distractor stimulus, contex...
Modality compatibility refers to the similarity of the stimulus modality and the modality of the sensory-response effect that the response produces (i.e., vocal responses produce auditory effects). In this study, we investigated the effect of short-term pre-exposure of modality compatibility in task-switching. To this end, participants were exposed...
We developed a new variant of auditory task-switching in order to systematically investigate shifting and cognitive control in auditory task-switching and their relation to motor response overlap in a comprehensive way. In two experiments, participants classified either pitch or loudness of a simple tone as either low or high, hence, both tasks wer...
The psychological refractory period (PRP) effect denotes the finding that shortening the temporal interval between two tasks leads to increased reaction time in the second task. Earlier work in driving simulators confirmed the emergence of a PRP effect even if the second task (T2) was ecologically relevant, such as in a car-braking task.
Here we ev...
In task-switching studies, performance is typically worse in task-switch trials than in task-repetition trials. These switch costs are often asymmetrical, a phenomenon that has been explained by referring to a dominance of one task over the other. Previous studies also indicated that response modalities associated with two tasks may be considered a...
A growing body of research suggests that basic numerical abilities such as number magnitude processing are influenced by cognitive control processes. So far, evidence for number processing being affected by cognitive control processes stems primarily from observed adaptations of numerical effects to stimulus set characteristics (e.g. order or ratio...
Modality compatibility (MC) describes the similarity between the modality of the stimulus and the modality of the anticipated response effect (e.g., auditory effects when speaking). Switching between two incompatible modality mappings (visual-vocal and auditory-manual) typically leads to larger costs than switching between two compatible modality m...
When humans perform a task, it has been shown that elements of this task, like stimulus (e.g., target and distractor) and response, are bound together into a common episodic representation called stimulus–response episode (or event file ). Recently, the context, a completely task-irrelevant stimulus, was found to be integrated into an episode as we...
Inappropriate speed is a main cause of accidents in the EU. Drivers are often unaware of potential risks due to inadequate speed. They are likely to reduce speed when their subjectively perceived driving speed is increased. To prevent dangerous situations, there is a need to understand perceptual factors influencing human speed perception. Due to t...
This study examined the reliability (retest and split-half) of four common behavioral measures of cognitive control. In Experiment 1 (N = 96), we examined N – 2 task repetition costs as a marker of task-level inhibition, and the cue-stimulus interval (CSI) effect as a marker of time-based task preparation. In Experiment 2 (N = 48), we examined a St...
[This corrects the article DOI: 10.5334/joc.186.].
In motor imagery, effector-specific inhibition (inhibition of the used effector) and global inhibition (inhibition of all motor commands) prevent actual actions. Global inhibition is partly maintained over time (tonic global inhibition) and partly implemented in response to certain events (phasic global inhibition). We investigated whether expectat...
Studies of switching between tasks and studies of error commission have both provided solid behavioral measures of executive control. Nonetheless, a gap remains between these strands of research. In three experiments we sought to reduce this gap by assessing the impact of task-errors on N-2 repetition costs, an effect supposedly related to task-set...
Two seemingly counterintuitive phenomena - asymmetrical language switch costs and the reversed language dominance effect - prove to be particularly controversial in the literature on language control. Asymmetrical language switch costs refer to the larger costs for switching into the dominant language compared to switching into the less dominant la...
Modality compatibility denotes the match between sensory stimulus modality and the sensory modality of the anticipated response effect (for example, vocal responses usually lead to auditory effects, so that auditory-vocal stimulus-response mappings are modality-compatible, whereas visual-vocal mappings are modality incompatible). In task switching...
The ability to distinguish between an individual's own actions and those of another person is a requirement for successful joint action, particularly in domains such as group music making where precise interpersonal coordination ensures perceptual overlap in the effects of co-performers' actions. We tested the hypothesis that such coordination bene...
The aim of the present study was to examine the interplay of morphological configuration switching and language switching. The morphological configuration is present in word-formation whenever a word contains more than one free morpheme. The morphological configuration is variable both within and between languages for example in two-digit number na...
In motor imagery, probably several inhibitory mechanisms prevent actual movements: global inhibition, effector-specific inhibition, and inhibition retrieved during target processing. We investigated factors that may influence those mechanisms. In an action mode switching paradigm, participants imagined and executed movements from home buttons to ta...
According to ideomotor accounts, actions are cognitively represented by their sensory effects. The response-effect compatibility (R-E compatibility) paradigm investigates this notion by presenting predictable effect stimuli that are produced by the response (“response effects”). The R-E compatibility effect denotes the finding of better performance...