Tasks by paradigm family¶

The 19 paradigm families, each with its scope statement and the tasks filed under it. Every task is in exactly one family. The family pages repeat these entries and add the assignments marked for review. The alphabetical list has the same tasks in name order.

Conflict and interference tasks ¶

A task-relevant feature must be reported while a task-irrelevant feature of the same stimulus or of a distractor pulls toward a competing response; the cost on incongruent trials is the measure.

Emotional Stroop ¶

Color-naming of emotionally valenced words; RT slowing on threat-related words indexes attentional bias to affective content. Engages 5 processes.

Eriksen Flanker ¶

A central target flanked by congruent or incongruent distractors; RT and error differences index selective attention and conflict resolution. Engages 5 processes.

Imitation-Inhibition ¶

Execute an instructed finger movement while observing a congruent or incongruent action performed by another person; the congruency effect (faster responses on congruent trials) indexes automatic imitation and the cost of inhibiting observed-action representations. Engages 3 processes.

Implicit Association ¶

Speeded categorization of stimuli belonging to two target concepts and two evaluative attributes using shared response keys; congruence-condition RT difference indexes implicit association. Engages 6 processes.

Navon ¶

Hierarchical letters in which large letters are composed of small ones; RT differences between global and local identification index attentional scope. Engages 4 processes.

Simon ¶

Non-spatial feature (e.g. color) dictates a left/right response while task-irrelevant stimulus location varies; RT cost on incongruent trials indexes spatial response conflict. Engages 5 processes.

Stroop Color-Word ¶

Naming the ink color of color words while ignoring word meaning; RT and error costs on incongruent trials index selective attention and conflict control. Engages 6 processes.

Weapons Identification ¶

Speeded categorization of tools vs weapons primed by faces of varying race; congruence effects index implicit racial bias in perception. Engages 6 processes.

Response inhibition and stopping tasks ¶

A prepared or prepotent response must be withheld or cancelled on a minority of trials; commission errors and stopping latency are the measures.

Anti-Saccade ¶

Participants must suppress a prepotent saccade toward a peripheral cue and generate a voluntary saccade to the opposite location; errors and saccade latency index oculomotor inhibition. Engages 6 processes.

Go/No-Go ¶

Responses required to frequent “go” stimuli must be withheld on rare “no-go” stimuli; commission errors and N2/P3 ERPs index response inhibition. Engages 5 processes.

Stop-Signal ¶

Choice RT task in which an occasional stop signal requires response cancellation; stop-signal reaction time (SSRT) estimates inhibitory latency. Engages 5 processes.

Sustained Attention to Response ¶

Speeded responses to frequent non-targets with withholding on rare targets; commission errors and RT variability index sustained attention lapses. Engages 5 processes.

Attentional cueing and orienting tasks ¶

A cue precedes a target and predicts its location or identity with some validity; the benefit of valid over invalid cues is the measure.

Attention Network ¶

Identify the direction of a central arrow flanked by congruent or incongruent arrows, preceded by various cue types; RT differences across cue and flanker conditions index three independent attention networks (alerting, orienting, executive). Engages 6 processes.

Dot-Probe ¶

A pair of cues (often threat/neutral) is followed by a probe at one cue location; RT difference by cue type indexes attentional bias. Engages 5 processes.

Posner Spatial Cueing ¶

A central or peripheral cue indicates the likely target location; RT differences between valid, neutral, and invalid cues index covert spatial orienting. Engages 5 processes.

Visual search and tracking tasks ¶

A target must be found among, or followed through, a field of distractors; search slopes, detection accuracy or tracking capacity are the measures.

Contextual Cueing ¶

Visual search in which some distractor configurations repeat across blocks; faster search on repeated configurations indexes implicit spatial context learning. Engages 4 processes.

Multiple Object Tracking ¶

Participants track a subset of identical moving objects among distractors for several seconds; tracking accuracy indexes sustained multifocal attention. Engages 5 processes.

Useful Field of View ¶

Brief central identification combined with peripheral localization under increasing distractor and divided-attention load; thresholds index processing speed and divided attention. Engages 5 processes.

Visual Search ¶

Detection of a target in a display of distractors; search slopes across set size dissociate feature (parallel) from conjunction (serial) search. Engages 5 processes.

Oddball, vigilance and continuous performance tasks ¶

A long stream of stimuli contains rare targets or deviants; detection, false alarms, response variability or the evoked response to the rare event are the measures.

Continuous Performance ¶

Extended stream of stimuli in which a rare target requires a response; omission and commission errors index sustained attention and response control. Engages 5 processes.

Mismatch Negativity ¶

Passive auditory oddball in which rare deviant sounds elicit a negative ERP around 150–250 ms, indexing pre-attentive auditory change detection. Engages 4 processes.

Oddball ¶

Sequence of standards with rare deviants or targets; deviants elicit a large positive ERP around 300 ms (P3a/P3b), indexing attention and context updating. Engages 5 processes.

Psychomotor Vigilance ¶

Simple reaction to visual or auditory stimuli appearing at random intervals over 5–10 minutes; mean RT, lapses, and false starts index sustained attention. Engages 4 processes.

Rapid Serial Visual Presentation ¶

A rapid stream of visual items is presented at a single location (typically 6-20 items/second); participants detect one or more targets among distractors. Target detection accuracy, especially for a second target shortly after a first (attentional blink), indexes temporal attention allocation. Engages 7 processes.

Perceptual judgment and psychophysics tasks ¶

A judgment about a sensory stimulus near or below threshold, or a passive presentation designed to isolate a perceptual response; thresholds, accuracy and evoked responses are the measures.

Auditory Masking ¶

Detect, discriminate, or identify a target sound in the presence of a masking sound; threshold shifts between masked and unmasked conditions index frequency selectivity, temporal resolution, and auditory scene analysis. Engages 4 processes.

Biological Motion Perception ¶

Judgment of human action or identity from sparse point-light displays attached to major joints; indexes recognition of biological motion from kinematic cues alone. Engages 5 processes.

Face Processing ¶

Blocked or event-related presentation of faces vs. objects (or scrambled faces) to localize face-selective cortical regions (FFA, OFA, pSTS). Engages 3 processes.

Random Dot Kinematogram ¶

A field of moving dots in which a variable fraction move coherently; direction judgments and RT under varying coherence support drift-diffusion modeling of perceptual decisions. Engages 5 processes.

Visual Masking ¶

A brief target is rendered invisible or reduced in visibility by a preceding or following mask; variants include metacontrast, paracontrast, pattern, forward, backward, common-onset, and object-substitution masking. Engages 4 processes.

Short-term and working memory tasks ¶

A small set of items must be held, and sometimes manipulated, over a delay of seconds before a probe or reproduction; span, capacity or set-size effects are the measures.

Change Detection ¶

Brief sample array followed after a blank delay by a probe array; participant reports whether any item changed. Yields visual working memory capacity (K). Engages 4 processes.

Corsi Block-Tapping ¶

Experimenter taps a sequence on spatially arranged blocks; participant reproduces the sequence forward or backward. Indexes visuospatial short-term and working memory span. Engages 4 processes.

Delayed Match-to-Sample ¶

Sample stimulus followed by a delay and then a probe or choice array; response indicates whether the probe matches the sample. Indexes short-term memory maintenance. Engages 4 processes.

Digit Span ¶

Auditory or visual digit sequences reproduced in forward or backward order; longest correctly reproduced length indexes verbal short-term and working memory span. Engages 5 processes.

N-Back ¶

Continuous stream in which each item must be compared to the one n items back; accuracy and RT index working memory updating and monitoring. Engages 5 processes.

Operation Span ¶

Alternating arithmetic verification and word/letter memory items; complex-span score indexes working memory capacity under processing load. Engages 5 processes.

Sternberg Item Recognition ¶

Short memory set followed by a probe; yes/no judgment of set membership. RT typically scales linearly with set size. Engages 5 processes.

Recall and recognition memory tests ¶

A study phase is followed, after minutes or longer, by a test that asks the participant to recall, recognize or attribute studied material; hits, false alarms and their decomposition are the measures.

Autobiographical Memory ¶

Participants retrieve specific personal memories in response to cue words or structured prompts; specificity, detail, and temporal distribution of retrieved episodes index autobiographical memory function. Engages 4 processes.

Cambridge Face Memory ¶

Learn target faces across viewpoints, then identify them among distractors under increasingly difficult conditions (novel viewpoints, visual noise); accuracy indexes face recognition ability and configural face processing. Engages 5 processes.

Free Recall ¶

Study of a list of items followed by unaided recall in any order; serial-position curves dissociate primacy and recency. Engages 6 processes.

Mnemonic Similarity ¶

Incidental encoding of images followed by a test with old, new, and lure items; discrimination of lures from repetitions indexes pattern separation. Engages 6 processes.

Old/New Recognition Memory ¶

Studied items mixed with new lures at test; hit and false-alarm rates yield d’ and can be decomposed into recollection and familiarity via ROC or remember/know. Engages 6 processes.

Paired Associates Learning ¶

Study of cue-target pairs followed by cued recall; proportion recalled indexes associative encoding and retrieval. Engages 5 processes.

Remember/Know ¶

Classify recognition hits as ‘remember’ (vivid recollection) or ‘know’ (familiarity without context); proportions index the relative contributions of recollection and familiarity to recognition memory. Engages 5 processes.

Rey Auditory Verbal Learning ¶

Repeated presentation of a 15-word list with immediate free recall over five trials, an interference list, and delayed recall; indexes verbal learning and forgetting. Engages 7 processes.

Source Memory ¶

After studying items presented in distinct contexts (speaker, location, modality, time), participants judge each item’s encoding source; source accuracy dissociates contextual recollection from item familiarity. Engages 5 processes.

Memory control and prospective memory tasks ¶

Encoding or retrieval is deliberately shaped by instruction: an item is to be forgotten, suppressed, related to the self, or an intention is to be executed later; the effect on later memory or on intention completion is the measure.

Directed Forgetting ¶

Study-phase cues instruct participants to remember or forget specific items or lists; later memory tests index intentional forgetting. Engages 5 processes.

Prospective Memory ¶

Participants perform an ongoing task while remembering to execute a deferred intention when a target event occurs (event-based) or after a time interval (time-based); PM hit rate indexes the ability to remember to remember. Engages 4 processes.

Self-Referential Encoding ¶

Participants judge whether trait adjectives describe themselves vs. another person or a semantic property; the self-reference effect (superior recall for self-encoded items) and endorsement patterns index self-concept and self-referential processing. Engages 4 processes.

Think/No-Think ¶

Cue words are presented with instructions to either retrieve or suppress their learned associate; later memory for suppressed items indexes retrieval-induced forgetting through inhibition. Engages 5 processes.

Metacognition, agency and interoception tasks ¶

The participant reports on their own cognition, action or body: confidence in future recall, the perceived time of an action, the sense that a limb or heartbeat is theirs; the correspondence between report and fact is the measure.

Body Ownership Illusion ¶

Synchronous multisensory stimulation of a participant’s hidden body part and a visible fake or virtual counterpart induces illusory ownership of the artificial body part; proprioceptive drift, subjective ratings, and threat responses index the strength of the illusion. Engages 3 processes.

Feeling-of-Knowing ¶

After failing to recall a studied item, participants rate the likelihood they could recognize the answer; the accuracy of these predictions (gamma correlation with recognition) indexes metacognitive monitoring of unretrieved memory. Engages 4 processes.

Heartbeat Detection ¶

Participants count or discriminate their own heartbeats without external feedback; the correspondence between perceived and actual heartbeat counts (or discrimination accuracy) indexes interoceptive sensitivity. Engages 3 processes.

Intentional Binding ¶

Participants judge the perceived time of a voluntary action and/or its sensory effect using a Libet clock; the temporal compression between action and effect (intentional binding) indexes the implicit sense of agency. Engages 3 processes.

Judgment-of-Learning ¶

After studying each item, participants predict the likelihood they will recall it on a later test; calibration and resolution of these predictions index metacognitive monitoring of encoding. Engages 4 processes.

Conditioning, reinforcement and implicit learning tasks ¶

Contingencies between stimuli, actions and outcomes are learned from experience, with or without explicit instruction; learning curves, choice probabilities and perseveration are the measures.

Artificial Grammar Learning ¶

Exposure to letter strings generated by a finite-state grammar followed by a grammaticality judgment on novel strings; indexes implicit rule learning. Engages 4 processes.

Causal Learning ¶

Participants observe cue-outcome pairings across trials and judge the causal strength of the relationship; judgment profiles across contingency conditions index causal induction and associative learning mechanisms. Engages 4 processes.

Instrumental Conditioning ¶

Actions are reinforced by contingent outcomes under defined schedules; response rate and choice probability across schedules index instrumental learning. Specific human instantiations include lever/button-press reward paradigms and free-operant tasks. Engages 5 processes.

Multi-Armed Bandit ¶

Repeated choice among options with unknown or changing reward distributions; choice sequences dissociate exploration from exploitation. Engages 5 processes.

Pavlovian Fear Conditioning ¶

A neutral CS is paired with an aversive US (shock, loud sound); conditioned responses (SCR, startle, amygdala BOLD) index fear learning. Engages 5 processes.

Probabilistic Classification Learning ¶

Multi-cue probabilistic prediction of a binary outcome with trial-by-trial feedback; learning curves index gradual procedural category learning. Engages 5 processes.

Probabilistic Selection ¶

Learn to choose between stimulus pairs through probabilistic feedback, then select among novel recombinations; choose-A vs. avoid-B accuracy dissociates positive and negative reinforcement learning. Engages 5 processes.

Reversal Learning ¶

After initial stimulus-reward learning, the contingencies switch; perseveration and reversal speed index behavioral flexibility. Engages 4 processes.

Serial Reaction Time ¶

Sequential key-press responses to cued locations; RT speedup on repeating vs random sequences indexes implicit sequence learning. Engages 5 processes.

Two-Stage Decision ¶

Sequential two-choice task with probabilistic transitions to second-stage states and drifting rewards; choice patterns dissociate model-based from model-free control. Engages 5 processes.

Motor performance and speeded response tasks ¶

Movement itself is the object: timing, sequencing, adaptation or speed of a well-specified response; tapping rate, error, completion time and dual-task cost are the measures.

Digit Symbol Substitution ¶

Timed paper-and-pencil or computerized task: substitute digits for symbols (or vice versa) using a visible key; items completed in a fixed interval index processing speed. Engages 5 processes.

Finger Tapping ¶

Repetitive single-finger or sequence tapping at fastest or paced rates; taps-per-interval and tap-timing variability index motor speed and rhythm control. Engages 4 processes.

Mirror Tracing ¶

Tracing of a figure viewed only in a mirror; error and completion time across trials index visuomotor adaptation and procedural learning. Engages 5 processes.

Motor Sequence Learning ¶

Repeated execution of a fixed finger sequence; within- and across-session speed and accuracy changes index motor skill learning. Engages 5 processes.

Psychological Refractory Period ¶

Two tasks presented with a short SOA; RT for the second task lengthens as SOA shortens, indexing a central response-selection bottleneck. Engages 4 processes.

Rule use, planning and reasoning tasks ¶

A rule must be discovered, applied, switched or used to plan a sequence of moves; switch costs, perseverative errors, solution accuracy and planning time are the measures.

Raven’s Progressive Matrices ¶

Matrix completion items requiring induction of a rule from a 3x3 array of figures; items correct is a standard measure of non-verbal reasoning. Engages 5 processes.

Remote Associates ¶

Three cue words linked to a single fourth word; solution rate and solution time index semantic search and insight. Engages 4 processes.

Task Switching ¶

Alternation between two or more simple tasks on cue; switch-cost RT and errors index task-set reconfiguration. Engages 4 processes.

Tower of London ¶

Rearrange colored beads on pegs to match a goal state in the minimum number of moves; pre-execution latency and move efficiency index planning. Engages 5 processes.

Trail Making ¶

Paper-and-pencil sequencing: connect numbered circles (Part A) or alternate numbers and letters (Part B) as fast as possible. B−A difference indexes set switching. Engages 5 processes.

Wason Selection ¶

Four cards with letters and numbers under a conditional rule; participants choose cards to turn over to test the rule. Indexes conditional reasoning and content effects. Engages 3 processes.

Wisconsin Card Sorting ¶

Sort cards by a hidden rule (color, form, or number) using only correct/incorrect feedback; after runs of correct sorts the rule silently switches. Perseverative errors index set-shifting. Engages 5 processes.

Reward, risk and value-based choice tasks ¶

Options differing in reward magnitude, probability, delay or effort are chosen between, or a cue announces a potential reward before a speeded response; choice curves and anticipatory responses are the measures.

Balloon Analog Risk ¶

Sequential pumping of a virtual balloon for monetary reward with stochastic popping; average pumps per un-popped balloon indexes risk-taking. Engages 5 processes.

Delay Discounting ¶

Repeated choices between smaller-sooner and larger-later rewards at varying delays; indifference points estimate a temporal discount function. Engages 5 processes.

Effort-Based Decision-Making ¶

Participants choose between a low-effort/low-reward option and a high-effort/high-reward option on each trial; the indifference point indexes effort discounting and motivational willingness to exert effort for reward. Engages 5 processes.

Iowa Gambling ¶

Repeated choices among four decks with hidden reward and loss distributions; preference shift toward advantageous decks indexes affective decision making. Engages 6 processes.

Monetary Incentive Delay ¶

Cue predicts potential monetary gain or loss; speeded target response determines outcome. Striatal activity to cues indexes reward anticipation. Engages 4 processes.

Emotion elicitation and regulation tasks ¶

Affective stimuli are presented to elicit, recognize or regulate an emotional response; ratings, physiological responses and recognition accuracy are the measures.

Affective Picture Viewing ¶

Passive or instructed viewing of emotionally valenced images (IAPS, GAPED, NAPS, OASIS) while physiological, neural, or rating responses to valence and arousal are recorded. Engages 6 processes.

Affective Priming ¶

Target evaluation (good/bad) preceded by a briefly presented affective prime; response facilitation on congruent trials indexes automatic evaluation. Engages 5 processes.

Emotion Regulation ¶

View affective images under instructions to reappraise or passively view; self-reported affect, physiological responses, and neural activity index emotion regulation ability. Engages 5 processes.

Facial Emotion Recognition ¶

Identification of an emotion category from a face image; accuracy and RT per emotion index emotion decoding ability. Engages 4 processes.

Language comprehension and production tasks ¶

Words, sentences or pictures are read, heard, named or generated; reading time, naming latency, lexical decision speed and fluency counts are the measures.

Lexical Decision ¶

Speeded word/nonword judgment; RT and accuracy index lexical access and are sensitive to frequency, priming, and context. Engages 5 processes.

Phonological Awareness ¶

Rhyme judgment, phoneme deletion, or phoneme blending tasks index sensitivity to the sound structure of language. Engages 4 processes.

Picture Naming ¶

Naming of pictured objects; RT and errors index lexical retrieval and are sensitive to name agreement, frequency, and age of acquisition. Engages 6 processes.

Self-Paced Reading ¶

Participants press a key to reveal each word or phrase of a sentence/passage; reading time per region indexes online processing difficulty and is sensitive to syntactic, semantic, and discourse-level manipulations. Engages 4 processes.

Semantic Priming ¶

Lexical or semantic decision on targets preceded by semantically related or unrelated primes; RT facilitation indexes automatic semantic activation. Engages 4 processes.

Sentence Comprehension ¶

Reading or listening to locally ambiguous sentences; reading-time disruptions and offline comprehension indexes syntactic reanalysis. Engages 6 processes.

Verb Generation ¶

Produce a verb associated with each presented noun; indexes lexical-semantic retrieval and inhibition of prepotent responses, with well-known left-prefrontal activation. Engages 5 processes.

Verbal Fluency ¶

Generate as many words as possible within a time limit matching a phonemic (letter) or semantic (category) constraint; production count and clustering/switching patterns index executive-lexical retrieval. Engages 4 processes.

Spatial cognition and navigation tasks ¶

A location or orientation in space must be learned, imagined or found; path efficiency, rotation cost and spatial errors are the measures.

Mental Rotation ¶

Judgment of whether two rotated objects are identical or mirror images; RT scales linearly with angular disparity, indexing mental rotation. Engages 4 processes.

Virtual Morris Water Maze ¶

Navigate a virtual circular arena to find a hidden platform using distal spatial cues; latency and search patterns index allocentric spatial learning and navigation ability. Engages 5 processes.

Virtual Radial Arm Maze ¶

Virtual multi-arm maze in which participants retrieve rewards from each arm once; working-memory and reference-memory errors index spatial memory. Engages 4 processes.

Pseudo tasks: rest, fixation and self-report blocks ¶

Block-level activities that establish or hold a brain state, or collect a self-report, rather than eliciting a process through trials; the participant rests, fixates or answers a questionnaire, and the block’s onset, offset and instruction are what is recorded. Pseudo tasks carry no process links by design.