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Dual-Task Interference Elicits Reactive Adjustments in Neural Correlates of Performance Monitoring

Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Interference in dual-tasking poses a challenge both for task performance and for effective performance monitoring. The question emerges whether the brain copes with such interference not only reactively but also proactively by engaging adjustments in anticipation of interference. The present study investigated how two key correlates of performance monitoring, the error-related negativity (Ne/ERN) and the error positivity (Pe), adjust to interference in dual-tasking. In a Psychological Refractory Period paradigm, participants completed two tasks separated by a long or short stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). Next to the actual SOA in a trial, we manipulated the expected SOA in blocks of trials by varying the frequency of short and long SOAs. This allowed participants to form expectations regarding the occurrence of dual-task interference, thereby creating conditions under which proactive adjustments to performance monitoring would be advantageous. While expecting short SOAs led to a proactive slowing of the first task in line with capacity-sharing accounts of dual-tasking, neural correlates of performance monitoring indicated a reactive but not proactive adjustment for the Pe. Following an erroneous response on the first task, the Pe was reactively reduced and later reappeared after the correct response of the second task, a pattern previously labeled adaptive rescheduling. For the Ne/ERN, no clear evidence for either a reactive or a proactive pattern emerged. Taken together, these findings suggest that performance monitoring adjusts reactively to dual-task interference in order to prevent interference between temporally overlapping processes while maintaining effective performance monitoring.
DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/dz75p
Language: English
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7213674723
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