It’s not a bug, it’s a feature: Executive functions in self-structured environments

In everyday life, we handle a multitude of stimuli and tasks. Mastering this challenge is based on the use of executive functions, for example, to prioritize, select and shield task processing against distractions. However, the situations that require the use of executive functions vary. There are externally structured situations and situations that can be structured by the people involved themselves. They vary in requiring sub-capabilities of executive functions. These situations exhibit different empirical phenomena and pose different challenges to experimental control. Here, we aim to examine effects that are typical for external and self-structured situations. Therefore, we developed a paradigm which makes demands on highly self-structure for successful task processing but still provides sufficient experimental control. The paradigm was used in two experiments in which participants inspected images of spring meadows with a variety of leaves, flowers and bugs. Participants had to mark all bugs based on three different characteristics but were free to choose their processing order and strategy. The exploratory Experiment 1 was used to derive hypotheses; these hypotheses were tested in the preregistered Experiment 2. Our results confirm typical effects from task switching research focusing on externally structured situations. Furthermore, we have identified various stable processing strategies and influences of processing sequences which can only be found in self-structured situations. Therefore, our results combine established findings from paradigms with externally structured situations and hence strong experimental control with new findings from self-structured situations and thus open a window into yet experimentally largely untapped aspects of executive functions.