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:

Associative Learning and Reinforcement (13)
Auditory and Pre-Attentive Deviance Processing (4)
Awareness, Agency, and Metacognition (13)
Cognitive Flexibility and Higher-Order Executive Function (3)
Emotion Perception and Regulation (5)
Face and Object Perception (12)
Implicit and Statistical Learning (2)
Inhibitory Control and Conflict Monitoring (9)
Language Comprehension and Production (16)
Long-Term Memory (21)
Motor Preparation, Timing, and Execution (16)
Perceptual Decision-Making (Evidence Accumulation) (1)
Reasoning and Problem-Solving (11)
Reward Anticipation and Motivation (6)
Selective and Sustained Attention (11)
Short-Term and Working Memory (9)
Social Cognition and Strategic Social Choice (11)
Spatial Cognition and Navigation (2)
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 Primary and secondary membership¶

Categories are organizational, not a hierarchy, so a process may belong to more than one. Every process has exactly one primary category, where its entry is filed: the category page holds the full entry and the listings place it there. A process may also be a secondary member of other categories, which cross-lists it there under “Also in this category” with a rationale saying why it belongs. The primary is a filing choice, made because an entry has to live somewhere; a secondary membership is as real an edge as the primary. The membership is the categories list on the process record in process_details.json, with the same fields as task family membership (task criteria, section 6.2).

When a process could fit two categories, the primary is decided by these rules, and the other category is the natural candidate for a secondary membership:

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 number of processes whose primary category it is; cross-listings are not counted. Drift between the count and the actual membership is a data quality issue, and src/generate_docs.py refuses to build when they disagree.

4.6 The review mark¶

Each membership carries a confidence of high or review. A review mark means the assignment is a judgement call the curator has flagged for a second opinion. On the primary it means “not sure this is the right home”; on a secondary it means “not sure this belongs here at all”. In both cases the rationale names the alternative or the doubt, and the process is listed under “Marked for review” on the category page for a reviewer to settle. To propose a move or a cross-listing, open an issue at https://github.com/hed-standard/hed-task/issues naming the process, the category, and the reason.