Cognitive flexibility enables humans to voluntarily switch tasks. Task switching requires replacing the previously active task representation with a new one, an operation that typically results in a switch cost. Thus, understanding cognitive flexibility requires understanding how tasks are represented in the brain. We hypothesize that task representations are cognitive map-like, such that the magnitude of the difference between task representations reflects their conceptual differences: The greater the distinction between the two task representations, the more updating is required. This hypothesis predicts that switch costs should increase with between task dissimilarity. To test this hypothesis, we use an experimental design that parametrically manipulates the similarity between task rules. We observe that response time scales with the dissimilarity between the task rules. The findings shed light on the organizational principles of task representations and extend the conventional binary task-switch effect (task repeat vs. switch) to a theoretical framework with parametric task switches. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

---

任务切换成本随着任务规则之间的差异而变化。


认知灵活性使人类能够自愿切换任务。任务切换需要用新的任务表示替换之前活动的任务表示，这一操作通常会导致切换成本。因此，了解认知灵活性需要了解任务在大脑中的表示方式。我们假设任务表示是类似认知地图的，这样任务表示之间的差异大小反映了它们的概念差异：两个任务表示之间的区别越大，需要的更新就越多。该假设预测，转换成本会随着任务之间的差异而增加。为了检验这个假设，我们使用了一种实验设计，以参数方式操纵任务规则之间的相似性。我们观察到响应时间随任务规则之间的差异而变化。研究结果揭示了任务表示的组织原则，并将传统的二元任务切换效应（任务重复与切换）扩展到具有参数任务切换的理论框架。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。