TSA is a Dutch translation of the TSA-IAT-test developed in Germany for measuring an individual’s capacity for task-switching. This capacity reflects a person’s executive control capability, which is assumed to be located in the prefrontal cortext.
We used TSA primarily as a research instrument, i.e., as a means to measure a person's psychological characteristics and to see if these characteristics are related to that person's ability to perform certain attention-related tasks, e.g., driving a car.
The TSA is translated from German into Dutch and implemented in E-prime. Therefore, it runs on every PC capable of running E-prime. A centrally presented item must be classified as quickly as possible on each trial by choosing between a category name shown on the left-hand side and a category name on the right-hand side of the screen. These categories either belong to a numerical classification task (choose between “numbers” and “arithmetic expressions”) or to an alphabetical classification task (choose between “words” and “letters”). On the most difficult (so-called critical) trials the participant sees two (instead of one) categories on each side. (S)he must determine him(her)self which classification task is relevant, depending on the type of central item to be classified.
On two blocks of these critical trials the categories on the same side are semantically compatible (e.g., numbers and arithmetic expressions). On two other blocks the same-side categories are incompatible (e.g., numbers and letters). The difference between the mean reaction times for incompatible and compatible trials is assumed to be indicative of a person’s task-switching ability (the higher the score, the worse the task-switching ability).
Driver Distraction, Secondary Visual Task Load, and Attention-Related Abilities. A conference paper describing research into the ability of the TSA (and other psychological tests) to predict a driver’s tendency to be distracted by auditory and visual stimuli while driving.
Back, M.D., Schmukle, S.C., & Egloff, B. (2005). Measuring Task-Switching Ability in the Implicit Association Test. Experimental Psychology, 52(3), 167-179.