4. Process category rules

4.1 The 19 categories

The catalog organizes 172 processes into 19 categories. The categories, their process counts, and their scope are defined in the categories array of process_details.json. The 19 categories are:

  1. Associative Learning and Reinforcement (13)

  2. Auditory and Pre-Attentive Deviance Processing (4)

  3. Awareness, Agency, and Metacognition (13)

  4. Cognitive Flexibility and Higher-Order Executive Function (3)

  5. Emotion Perception and Regulation (5)

  6. Face and Object Perception (12)

  7. Implicit and Statistical Learning (2)

  8. Inhibitory Control and Conflict Monitoring (9)

  9. Language Comprehension and Production (16)

  10. Long-Term Memory (21)

  11. Motor Preparation, Timing, and Execution (16)

  12. Perceptual Decision-Making (Evidence Accumulation) (1)

  13. Reasoning and Problem-Solving (11)

  14. Reward Anticipation and Motivation (6)

  15. Selective and Sustained Attention (11)

  16. Short-Term and Working Memory (9)

  17. Social Cognition and Strategic Social Choice (11)

  18. Spatial Cognition and Navigation (2)

  19. Value-Based Decision-Making Under Risk and Uncertainty (7)

4.2 Purpose of categories

Categories serve as organizational labels for human browsing. They are not ontological commitments. A process belongs to the category whose scope best describes its primary research tradition. Categories do not imply inheritance or class membership.

4.3 Category structure

Each category entry in process_details.json has:

  • scope: What belongs here - a brief description of the process family.

  • out_of_scope (optional): What tends to get put here but shouldn’t.

  • issues (optional): Open questions about boundaries, near-synonyms, or structural problems.

4.4 Dual-category processes

Every process is assigned to exactly one category. When a process could fit two categories, the rule is:

  • File by primary research tradition. Antisaccade is in Motor Preparation, Timing, and Execution because it is an oculomotor output measure, even though it centrally depends on prepotent-saccade inhibition (which would argue for Inhibitory Control).

  • File second-order processes by their second-order character. Metacognitive monitoring, self-monitoring, feeling of knowing, and judgment of learning are in Awareness, Agency, and Metacognition (not in their “first-order” home categories) because the reportable content is what the participant consciously experiences about their own cognition.

  • Perceptual processes go by modality when modality-specific, by mechanism when modality-abstract. Proprioception stays in Motor despite being perceptual, because it is tightly functionally coupled to motor control in the experimental literature.

4.5 Category process counts

Each category entry in process_details.json carries a process_count field. This must match the actual number of processes assigned to that category_id in the processes array. Drift between the count and the actual membership is a data quality issue.