Tasks¶

The Catalog defines 103 standard cognitive and behavioral neuroscience tasks, and 3 pseudo tasks (rest, fixation and questionnaire blocks) that set up or hold a state rather than eliciting a process. Each task page gives the canonical name and aliases, a description, the inclusion test that decides whether an experiment is an instance of the task, its named variations, the cognitive processes it engages, and references.

Tasks are filed under 19 paradigm families by what the participant does, not by which process the task is thought to measure. The Catalog’s process list covers that other axis, and the two cross-link. Families are organizational, not a hierarchy. Every task has one primary family, where its page is filed, and may be cross-listed under others as a secondary member; 12 tasks are cross-listed at present. The assignments are curation decisions and are expected to change as the Catalog grows; 15 memberships are marked review. The task family assignment rules say how families are assigned.

A review mark means the assignment is a judgement call the curator has flagged for a second opinion. On the family an entry is filed under it means “not sure this is the right home”; on a cross-listing it means “not sure this belongs here at all”. The note names the alternative or the doubt. Comments go to the issue tracker.

Two ways in:

Tasks by paradigm family lists every task under its family, with the family’s scope statement.
Tasks alphabetically lists every task in name order, for when you know the name and not the family.

Families at a glance¶

Family	Tasks filed	Cross-listed
Conflict and interference tasks	8	2
Response inhibition and stopping tasks	4	-
Attentional cueing and orienting tasks	3	-
Visual search and tracking tasks	4	1
Oddball, vigilance and continuous performance tasks	5	1
Perceptual judgment and psychophysics tasks	5	3
Short-term and working memory tasks	7	-
Recall and recognition memory tests	9	-
Memory control and prospective memory tasks	4	-
Metacognition, agency and interoception tasks	5	-
Conditioning, reinforcement and implicit learning tasks	10	1
Motor performance and speeded response tasks	5	2
Rule use, planning and reasoning tasks	7	-
Reward, risk and value-based choice tasks	6	-
Social cognition and social choice tasks	6	1
Emotion elicitation and regulation tasks	4	-
Language comprehension and production tasks	8	1
Spatial cognition and navigation tasks	3	-
Pseudo tasks: rest, fixation and self-report blocks	3	-