Taboo: Working memory and mental control in an interactive task

Transcription

1 Taboo: Working memory and mental control in an interactive task WHITNEY A. HANSEN and STEPHEN D. GOLDINGER Arizona State University Individual differences in working memory (WM) predict principled variation in tasks of reasoning, response time, memory, and other abilities. Theoretically, a central function of WM is keeping task-relevant information easily accessible while suppressing irrelevant information. The present experiment was a novel study of mental control, using performance in the game Taboo as a measure. We tested effects of WM capacity on several indices, including perseveration errors (repeating previous guesses or clues) and taboo errors (saying at least part of a taboo or target word). By most measures, high-span participants were superior to low-span participants: High-spans were better at guessing answers, better at encouraging correct guesses from teammates, and less likely to either repeat themselves or produce taboo clues. Differences in taboo errors occurred only in an easy control condition. The results suggest that WM capacity predicts behavior in tasks requiring mental control, extending this finding to an interactive group setting when people must negotiate competing signals or po- - the natural tendency to shift visual attention toward task-relevant goals and information active while suppressing task-irrelevant signals or unwanted - American Journal of Psychology

2 susceptibility to Stroop interference: Lower-span participants were less efficient in suppressing prepo- - struggle to suppress ideas once they have been intro- - more names and fewer repetitions compared with low spans are inefficient even in single tasks and are thus The present research: Taboo - - practical implications and also relates to theories of mental control that occurred when people performed leakage occurred more often when people explicitly tried to avoid revealing properties of the hidden that people may suffer lapses of mental control during - elicit the target word from teammates while refraining FIGURE 1. A typical game card from Taboo, with the target word whistle and its taboo associates HANSEN & GOLDINGER

3 - noise, blow, sound, lips, referee tigated Taboo because it provides a unique synthesis - attention: They must resist the temptation to speak - dual demands on working memory in Taboo: People must keep taboo words active while resisting the urge for other salient clues while suppressing unrelated mental workloads selectively impaired high-span - workload imposed by these control trials was greatly reduced because the target words were the only off- - we expected larger group differences in the simple be most evident in the easier task but it is consistent - - and guessers to avoid repeating unsuccessful clues expected high-spans to make fewer perseverations EXPERIMENT METHOD - - WMC Screening PARTICIPANTS. MATERIALS. - - TABOO

4 Taboo correct incorrect PARTICIPANTS. - consistently in the upper or lower quartiles were 1-2 MATERIALS. - five percent of the Taboo cards were removed from - PROCEDURE. Groups of three to six participants were scheduled prevented systematic assignment of high- and low- - there were four instances in which a group consisted of only high-span participants or one group that con- The goal of Taboo is to correctly guess as many - the opposing team were in charge of monitoring the - TV television - correctly guessed the target word or the speaker made Participants played in a conference room in the HANSEN & GOLDINGER

5 the simple and complex conditions were counterbal- - RESULTS Data coding ing behaviors were coded separately for each par- Correct responses ing targets in the simple condition than in the com- Fp p2 Fp p2 effect that was driven largely by low-span participants dition Fns from their teammates in the simple condition than in F p p2 F p p2 - Fns Taboo errors the Taboo words in mind while resisting the urge FIGURE 2. Correct responses: (a) Percentages of correct guesses ( SEM) for low- and high-span participants in each condition; (b) elicited correct response rates ( SEM) for low- and high-span speakers in each condition F p p2 F p p2 - F p p2 ence between groups was substantial in the simple F p p2 Fns Passing rates - TABOO

6 FIGURE 3. Negative behaviors: (a) Taboo rates ( SEM) for low- and high-span participants in each condition; (b) passing rates ( SEM) for low- and high-span participants in each condition; (c, d) perseveration rates ( SEM) for guessers and speakers, respectively F p p2 Fp p2 F ns Perseveration rates Figure 3c shows perseveration rates as percentages of F p p2 F p p2 - condition interaction did Fns - Fns Fp p2 with high-spans perseverating less often than low- F ns DISCUSSION - - HANSEN & GOLDINGER

7 By naturally combining so many elements of prior - update their responses based on the responses of other settings wherein teams of people must cooper- mance was better for all participants in the simple surprising given the constraints that the complex condition imposes on players: It presents dual challenges of keeping forbidden words active while - of increased mental load and removal of common - span participants played Taboo more effectively guessers and were more likely to elicit correct guesses the added constraints had a more profound effect on been reported in procedures that force simultaneous uniformly superior performance by high-span vol- - We failed to find span condition interactions on - from participants suggest that perseverations were occasionally intentional: Speakers sometimes repeated effect of condition was observed for speaking per- - spans outperformed low-spans because they were better able to negotiate the competing attentional Other findings - - interesting and unexpected differences in our partici- - significantly more likely to show up for scheduled 2 p participants must remember to respond given a cer- processes to keep goal-related information active TABOO

8 p we are reluctant to overinterpret this isolated obser- differences between low- and high-span partici- underestimated - - wherein someone reads a card and promptly says - gest a social solution to resource limitations in that - boo deviates from this typical approach toward an likely to provide important new insights into the complex relationship of working memory and men- NOTES - we used a conservative approach to classify participants as z scores for all participants in each test and derived averages of those z z score had to fall - - qualitatively and statistically consistent with those reported in REFERENCES ing memory and intelligence: The same or different con- Psychological Bulletin, 131, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 13, Neuropsychology, 18, Nature Reviews: Neuroscience, 4, Memory & Cognition, 11, Behaviour Research and Therapy, 40, Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 36, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 33, cocktail party phenomenon revisited: The importance Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 8, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12, - Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 19, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11, HANSEN & GOLDINGER

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