Task Switching <- We used the Rogers and Monsell (1995) alternative runs task switching paradigm to measure the rapidity with which participants can switch between two different tasks, as an index of executive function. In this task, there are 3 conditions: Task A pure, Task B pure, Mixed that appeared in separate blocks.
Task A refers to a letter task wherein participants were asked to indicate whether a letter in a pair of letter-number characters was a vowel or a consonant, whereas Task B refers to a number task wherein participants were asked to indicate whether a number in a pair of number-letter characters was odd or even. In the Mixed condition, participants conducted two trials of Task A followed by two trials of Task B then back to Task A. Hence, a task switch occurred in the Mixed condition every two trials. Participants were instructed that if the character pair appeared at the top of the screen then it is Task A, whereas if it appeared at the bottom of the screen then it is
Task B. The difficulty to switch between tasks is expressed as the slowing of responses or errors made to the target immediately following a task switch versus a task repeat in the Mixed Condition. Participants were asked to respond with the keyboard keys ‘b’ and ‘n’ to the letters (consonant/vowel) and numbers (odd/even).
The variables manipulated were, therefore, Task Type (A, B or Mixed) and Task Switch (no switch, switch). There were 80 trials in each of Tasks A and B, all of which were no switch, and 80 trials in Mixed, of which only half were no switch.
Participants completed this study online via Psytoolkit (Stoet, 2017; 2010). All participants first responded to demographic questions that queried age, sex and linguistic ability then they were asked to complete the WebExec and Cognitive Flexibility Scale. The Task Switching paradigm was conducted following the questionnaires. At the end of each task, participants received feedback about their performance. The study took participants no longer than 30-minutes to complete.
The results section of a research report is wherein you report the findings of your study based upon the information gathered through any methodology that you used.
The results section should simply state the findings, in APA format, without bias or interpretation and in a logical sequence. You ought only to provide the results that are relevant to your research question with sufficient detail to help the reader understand the way in which data analysis was conducted and what the data means.
Be aware that the data collected herein is purely for demonstrativepurposes; we, therefore, cannot draw grand conclusions from this data set. Also note that in science we do not always find significant results, but such results are still important as they help answer the research question (is there an effect?), and in the discussion one can speculate about why there was or was not an effect (did you do something different? Did you not control for something? Does it not exist? Does it emerge only under certain conditions? Are there method limitations?).
