Task catalog

This catalog contains 103 standard cognitive and behavioral neuroscience tasks. Each task has a canonical definition, inclusion criteria, named variations, and links to the cognitive processes it engages.

Tasks

Task	Short Definition	Processes
Affective Picture Viewing Task	Passive or instructed viewing of emotionally valenced images (IAPS, GAPED, NAPS, OASIS) while physio…	6
Affective Priming Task	Target evaluation (good/bad) preceded by a briefly presented affective prime; response facilitation…	5
Anti-Saccade Task	Participants must suppress a prepotent saccade toward a peripheral cue and generate a voluntary sacc…	6
Artificial Grammar Learning Task	Exposure to letter strings generated by a finite-state grammar followed by a grammaticality judgment…	4
Attention Network Task	Identify the direction of a central arrow flanked by congruent or incongruent arrows, preceded by va…	6
Auditory Masking Task	Detect, discriminate, or identify a target sound in the presence of a masking sound; threshold shift…	4
Autobiographical Memory Task	Participants retrieve specific personal memories in response to cue words or structured prompts; spe…	4
Balloon Analog Risk Task	Sequential pumping of a virtual balloon for monetary reward with stochastic popping; average pumps p…	5
Biological Motion Perception Task	Judgment of human action or identity from sparse point-light displays attached to major joints; inde…	5
Body Ownership Illusion Task	Synchronous multisensory stimulation of a participant’s hidden body part and a visible fake or virtu…	3
Cambridge Face Memory Task	Learn target faces across viewpoints, then identify them among distractors under increasingly diffic…	5
Causal Learning Task	Participants observe cue-outcome pairings across trials and judge the causal strength of the relatio…	4
Change Detection Task	Brief sample array followed after a blank delay by a probe array; participant reports whether any it…	4
Contextual Cueing Task	Visual search in which some distractor configurations repeat across blocks; faster search on repeate…	4
Continuous Performance Task	Extended stream of stimuli in which a rare target requires a response; omission and commission error…	5
Corsi Block-Tapping Task	Experimenter taps a sequence on spatially arranged blocks; participant reproduces the sequence forwa…	4
Delay Discounting Task	Repeated choices between smaller-sooner and larger-later rewards at varying delays; indifference poi…	5
Delayed Match-to-Sample Task	Sample stimulus followed by a delay and then a probe or choice array; response indicates whether the…	4
Dictator Game Task	One-shot allocation task in which a proposer unilaterally divides an endowment between self and a pa…	4
Digit Span Task	Auditory or visual digit sequences reproduced in forward or backward order; longest correctly reprod…	5
Digit Symbol Substitution Task	Timed paper-and-pencil or computerized task: substitute digits for symbols (or vice versa) using a v…	5
Directed Forgetting Task	Study-phase cues instruct participants to remember or forget specific items or lists; later memory t…	5
Dot-Probe Task	A pair of cues (often threat/neutral) is followed by a probe at one cue location; RT difference by c…	5
Effort-Based Decision-Making Task	Participants choose between a low-effort/low-reward option and a high-effort/high-reward option on e…	5
Emotion Regulation Task	View affective images under instructions to reappraise or passively view; self-reported affect, phys…	5
Emotional Stroop Task	Color-naming of emotionally valenced words; RT slowing on threat-related words indexes attentional b…	5
Eriksen Flanker Task	A central target flanked by congruent or incongruent distractors; RT and error differences index sel…	5
Face Processing Task	Blocked or event-related presentation of faces vs. objects (or scrambled faces) to localize face-sel…	3
Facial Emotion Recognition Task	Identification of an emotion category from a face image; accuracy and RT per emotion index emotion d…	4
False Belief Task	Wimmer & Perner–style narrative in which a protagonist holds a belief the participant knows to be fa…	4
Feeling-of-Knowing Task	After failing to recall a studied item, participants rate the likelihood they could recognize the an…	4
Finger Tapping Task	Repetitive single-finger or sequence tapping at fastest or paced rates; taps-per-interval and tap-ti…	4
Free Recall Task	Study of a list of items followed by unaided recall in any order; serial-position curves dissociate…	6
Go/No-Go Task	Responses required to frequent “go” stimuli must be withheld on rare “no-go” stimuli; commission err…	5
Heartbeat Detection Task	Participants count or discriminate their own heartbeats without external feedback; the correspondenc…	3
Imitation-Inhibition Task	Execute an instructed finger movement while observing a congruent or incongruent action performed by…	3
Implicit Association Task	Speeded categorization of stimuli belonging to two target concepts and two evaluative attributes usi…	6
Instrumental Conditioning Task	Actions are reinforced by contingent outcomes under defined schedules; response rate and choice prob…	5
Intentional Binding Task	Participants judge the perceived time of a voluntary action and/or its sensory effect using a Libet…	3
Iowa Gambling Task	Repeated choices among four decks with hidden reward and loss distributions; preference shift toward…	6
Judgment-of-Learning Task	After studying each item, participants predict the likelihood they will recall it on a later test; c…	4
Lexical Decision Task	Speeded word/nonword judgment; RT and accuracy index lexical access and are sensitive to frequency,…	5
Mental Rotation Task	Judgment of whether two rotated objects are identical or mirror images; RT scales linearly with angu…	4
Mirror Tracing Task	Tracing of a figure viewed only in a mirror; error and completion time across trials index visuomoto…	5
Mismatch Negativity Task	Passive auditory oddball in which rare deviant sounds elicit a negative ERP around 150–250 ms, index…	4
Mnemonic Similarity Task	Incidental encoding of images followed by a test with old, new, and lure items; discrimination of lu…	6
Monetary Incentive Delay Task	Cue predicts potential monetary gain or loss; speeded target response determines outcome. Striatal a…	4
Motor Sequence Learning Task	Repeated execution of a fixed finger sequence; within- and across-session speed and accuracy changes…	5
Multi-Armed Bandit Task	Repeated choice among options with unknown or changing reward distributions; choice sequences dissoc…	5
Multiple Object Tracking Task	Participants track a subset of identical moving objects among distractors for several seconds; track…	5
N-Back Task	Continuous stream in which each item must be compared to the one n items back; accuracy and RT index…	5
Navon Task	Hierarchical letters in which large letters are composed of small ones; RT differences between globa…	4
Oddball Task	Sequence of standards with rare deviants or targets; deviants elicit a large positive ERP around 300…	5
Old/New Recognition Memory Task	Studied items mixed with new lures at test; hit and false-alarm rates yield d’ and can be decomposed…	6
Operation Span Task	Alternating arithmetic verification and word/letter memory items; complex-span score indexes working…	5
Paired Associates Learning Task	Study of cue-target pairs followed by cued recall; proportion recalled indexes associative encoding…	5
Pavlovian Fear Conditioning Task	A neutral CS is paired with an aversive US (shock, loud sound); conditioned responses (SCR, startle,…	5
Phonological Awareness Task	Rhyme judgment, phoneme deletion, or phoneme blending tasks index sensitivity to the sound structure…	4
Picture Naming Task	Naming of pictured objects; RT and errors index lexical retrieval and are sensitive to name agreemen…	6
Posner Spatial Cueing Task	A central or peripheral cue indicates the likely target location; RT differences between valid, neut…	5
Prisoner’s Dilemma Task	Two-player one-shot or iterated game with cooperate/defect choices and asymmetric payoffs; choice pa…	6
Probabilistic Classification Learning Task	Multi-cue probabilistic prediction of a binary outcome with trial-by-trial feedback; learning curves…	5
Probabilistic Selection Task	Learn to choose between stimulus pairs through probabilistic feedback, then select among novel recom…	5
Prospective Memory Task	Participants perform an ongoing task while remembering to execute a deferred intention when a target…	4
Psychological Refractory Period Task	Two tasks presented with a short SOA; RT for the second task lengthens as SOA shortens, indexing a c…	4
Psychomotor Vigilance Task	Simple reaction to visual or auditory stimuli appearing at random intervals over 5–10 minutes; mean…	4
Random Dot Kinematogram Task	A field of moving dots in which a variable fraction move coherently; direction judgments and RT unde…	5
Rapid Serial Visual Presentation Task	A rapid stream of visual items is presented at a single location (typically 6-20 items/second); part…	7
Raven’s Progressive Matrices Task	Matrix completion items requiring induction of a rule from a 3x3 array of figures; items correct is…	5
Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task	Choice of the best-matching mental-state word for a photograph of the eye region; accuracy indexes c…	4
Remember/Know Task	Classify recognition hits as ‘remember’ (vivid recollection) or ‘know’ (familiarity without context)…	5
Remote Associates Task	Three cue words linked to a single fourth word; solution rate and solution time index semantic searc…	4
Reversal Learning Task	After initial stimulus-reward learning, the contingencies switch; perseveration and reversal speed i…	4
Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Task	Repeated presentation of a 15-word list with immediate free recall over five trials, an interference…	7
Self-Paced Reading Task	Participants press a key to reveal each word or phrase of a sentence/passage; reading time per regio…	4
Self-Referential Encoding Task	Participants judge whether trait adjectives describe themselves vs. another person or a semantic pro…	4
Semantic Priming Task	Lexical or semantic decision on targets preceded by semantically related or unrelated primes; RT fac…	4
Sentence Comprehension Task	Reading or listening to locally ambiguous sentences; reading-time disruptions and offline comprehens…	6
Serial Reaction Time Task	Sequential key-press responses to cued locations; RT speedup on repeating vs random sequences indexe…	5
Simon Task	Non-spatial feature (e.g. color) dictates a left/right response while task-irrelevant stimulus locat…	5
Social Incentive Delay Task	MID variant in which cues predict potential social (smiling/frowning face) rather than monetary outc…	4
Source Memory Task	After studying items presented in distinct contexts (speaker, location, modality, time), participant…	5
Sternberg Item Recognition Task	Short memory set followed by a probe; yes/no judgment of set membership. RT typically scales linearl…	5
Stop-Signal Task	Choice RT task in which an occasional stop signal requires response cancellation; stop-signal reacti…	5
Stroop Color-Word Task	Naming the ink color of color words while ignoring word meaning; RT and error costs on incongruent t…	6
Sustained Attention to Response Task	Speeded responses to frequent non-targets with withholding on rare targets; commission errors and RT…	5
Task Switching Task	Alternation between two or more simple tasks on cue; switch-cost RT and errors index task-set reconf…	4
Think/No-Think Task	Cue words are presented with instructions to either retrieve or suppress their learned associate; la…	5
Tower of London Task	Rearrange colored beads on pegs to match a goal state in the minimum number of moves; pre-execution…	5
Trail Making Task	Paper-and-pencil sequencing: connect numbered circles (Part A) or alternate numbers and letters (Par…	5
Trust Game Task	Two-stage exchange in which an investor transfers a fraction of an endowment (multiplied on receipt)…	5
Two-Stage Decision Task	Sequential two-choice task with probabilistic transitions to second-stage states and drifting reward…	5
Ultimatum Game Task	Proposer offers a division of an endowment; responder accepts or rejects. Rejection of unfair offers…	4
Useful Field of View Task	Brief central identification combined with peripheral localization under increasing distractor and d…	5
Verb Generation Task	Produce a verb associated with each presented noun; indexes lexical-semantic retrieval and inhibitio…	5
Verbal Fluency Task	Generate as many words as possible within a time limit matching a phonemic (letter) or semantic (cat…	4
Virtual Morris Water Maze Task	Navigate a virtual circular arena to find a hidden platform using distal spatial cues; latency and s…	5
Virtual Radial Arm Maze Task	Virtual multi-arm maze in which participants retrieve rewards from each arm once; working-memory and…	4
Visual Masking Task	A brief target is rendered invisible or reduced in visibility by a preceding or following mask; vari…	4
Visual Search Task	Detection of a target in a display of distractors; search slopes across set size dissociate feature…	5
Wason Selection Task	Four cards with letters and numbers under a conditional rule; participants choose cards to turn over…	3
Weapons Identification Task	Speeded categorization of tools vs weapons primed by faces of varying race; congruence effects index…	6
Wisconsin Card Sorting Task	Sort cards by a hidden rule (color, form, or number) using only correct/incorrect feedback; after ru…	5