Distraction tasks are known to affect the unconscious-thought (UT) effect. However, the relationship between two task types, namely distraction and target tasks, and their effect on UT effect have not been examined in previous studies. In this study, we assessed whether simultaneously performing dissimilar distraction and target tasks are beneficial to information processing by UT. In Experiment 1, the target task was an Alternate Use Task (speech task). For the similar-task test, the UT group was assigned the speech 1-back task (speech task) as the distraction task; for the dissimilar-task test, the UT group was assigned the spatial 1-back task (spatial task) as the distraction task. The results of the experiment revealed that under dissimilar tasks, the UT group not only provided more answers but also provided answers that were more novel. For Experiment 2, the target task was changed to Creative Mental Synthesis Task (spatial task) to replicate the results of Experiment 1. The results demonstrated that the dissimilarity between the distraction and target tasks facilitates the UT.

中文翻译：

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相似还是不同？分心任务与目标任务的相似性对无意识思维的影响

众所周知，分心任务会影响无意识思维 (UT) 效应。然而，之前的研究尚未研究两种任务类型之间的关系，即分心任务和目标任务，以及它们对 UT 效果的影响。在这项研究中，我们评估了同时执行不同的分心任务和目标任务是否有利于 UT 的信息处理。在实验 1 中，目标任务是一个 Alternate Use Task（语音任务）。对于相似任务测试，UT组被分配了语音1-back任务（语音任务）作为分心任务；对于不同任务测试，UT 组被分配了空间 1-back 任务（空间任务）作为分心任务。实验结果显示，在不同的任务下，UT组不仅提供了更多的答案，而且提供了更新颖的答案。