A frequent observation in dual-task studies is the backward crosstalk effect (BCE), meaning that aspects of a secondary Task 2 influence Task 1 performance. Up to this point, 2 major types of the BCE were investigated: a BCE based on dimensional overlap between both stimuli and/or responses (the compatibility-based BCE), and a BCE based on whether…

According to distractor-based response retrieval (Frings, Rothermund, & Wentura, 2007), irrelevant information will be integrated with the response to the relevant stimuli and further, the immediate repetition of irrelevant information can retrieve the previously executed response thereby influencing responding to the current target (leading…

Proactive interference (PI) refers to the finding that memory for recently studied (target) material can be impaired by the prior study of other (nontarget) material. Previous accounts of PI differed in whether they attributed PI to impaired retrieval or impaired encoding. Here, we suggest an integrated encoding-retrieval account, which assigns a…

Even an irrelevant distractor stimulus is integrated into event files. Subsequently repeating the distractor triggers retrieval of the event file; however, an unresolved issue concerns the question of "what" is retrieved by the distractor. While recent studies predominantly assume that the distractor retrieves the previous response, it…

In task switching, a common result supporting the notion of inhibitory processes as a determinant of switch costs is the occurrence of "n"-2 repetition costs. Evidence suggests that this effect is not affected by preparation. However, the role of preparation on preceding trials has been neglected so far. In this study, evidence for an…

Rating the relevance of words for the imagined situation of being stranded in the grasslands without survival material leads to exceptionally good memory for these words. This survival processing effect has received much attention because it promises to elucidate the evolutionary foundations of memory. However, the proximate mechanisms of the…

To investigate bilingual language control, prior language switching studies presented visual objects, which had to be named in different languages, typically indicated by a visual cue. The present study examined language switching of predictable responses by introducing a novel sequence-based language switching paradigm. In 4 experiments,…