Task Switching and Cognitive Control Processes

The aim of this work is to understand some of the processes involved in the selection of appropriate tasks, and in the selection of correct responses to those tasks. The main focus will be on how interference and conflict occurs during these processes, either at the perceptual or action selection stages when switching task. It should be possible to demonstrate with increases to the number of attributes, the experience of tasks associated with non-target attributes, and in varying the number of trials before switching tasks, that task selection consists of several stages or processes, and that these processes do not necessarily interact. This will show that the switch cost is not an unitary cost associated with changing a single response-stimulus setting, task parameter, or an overall task set, but a composite of various costs associated with different task selection processes.