Practice effects on dual-task order coordination and its sequential adjustment

When the performance of two tasks overlaps in time, performance impairments in one or both tasks are common. Various theoretical explanations for how component tasks are controlled in dual-task situations have been advanced. However, less attention has been paid to the issue of how two temporally overlapping tasks are appropriately coordinated in terms of their order. The current study focuses on two specific aspects of this task-order coordination: (1) the potential effects of practice on task-order coordination performance and (2) its relationships with cognitive meta-control mechanisms that adjust this coordination. These aspects were investigated in a visual-auditory dual-task combination with randomly changing task orders across trials after four sessions of dual-task practice (N = 24) and single-task practice (N = 24). The results demonstrated that task-order coordination improves during dual-task practice, and in contrast to the effects of single-task practice. Practice, on the other hand, did not show substantial evidence of an effect on the adjustment of task-order coordination. This practice-related dissociation is consistent with the assumption that (1) task-order coordination and (2) its sequential adjustment are separable sets of processes.