TY - JOUR
T1 - The benefit of no choice
T2 - goal-directed plans enhance perceptual processing
AU - Janczyk, Markus
AU - Dambacher, Michael
AU - Bieleke, Maik
AU - Gollwitzer, Peter M.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG; German Research Foundation), grant JA 2307/1-1 awarded to Markus Janczyk. The co-authors were supported by the DFG research unit FOR 1882 Psychoeconomics. We thank Arvid Herwig for many helpful comments on a previous version of this manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2014, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.
PY - 2014/3
Y1 - 2014/3
N2 - Choosing among different options is costly. Typically, response times are slower if participants can choose between several alternatives (free-choice) compared to when a stimulus determines a single correct response (forced-choice). This performance difference is commonly attributed to additional cognitive processing in free-choice tasks, which require time-consuming decisions between response options. Alternatively, the forced-choice advantage might result from facilitated perceptual processing, a prediction derived from the framework of implementation intentions. This hypothesis was tested in three experiments. Experiments 1 and 2 were PRP experiments and showed the expected underadditive interaction of the SOA manipulation and task type, pointing to a pre-central perceptual origin of the performance difference. Using the additive-factors logic, Experiment 3 further supported this view. We discuss the findings in the light of alternative accounts and offer potential mechanisms underlying performance differences in forced- and free-choice tasks.
AB - Choosing among different options is costly. Typically, response times are slower if participants can choose between several alternatives (free-choice) compared to when a stimulus determines a single correct response (forced-choice). This performance difference is commonly attributed to additional cognitive processing in free-choice tasks, which require time-consuming decisions between response options. Alternatively, the forced-choice advantage might result from facilitated perceptual processing, a prediction derived from the framework of implementation intentions. This hypothesis was tested in three experiments. Experiments 1 and 2 were PRP experiments and showed the expected underadditive interaction of the SOA manipulation and task type, pointing to a pre-central perceptual origin of the performance difference. Using the additive-factors logic, Experiment 3 further supported this view. We discuss the findings in the light of alternative accounts and offer potential mechanisms underlying performance differences in forced- and free-choice tasks.
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U2 - 10.1007/s00426-014-0549-5
DO - 10.1007/s00426-014-0549-5
M3 - Article
C2 - 24619532
AN - SCOPUS:84895612523
SN - 0340-0727
VL - 79
SP - 206
EP - 220
JO - Psychologische Forschung
JF - Psychologische Forschung
IS - 2
ER -