ArticleNature reviews psychology2023
Principles of cognitive control over task focus and task switching.
Article in Nature reviews psychology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 63 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
63 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Sorting the mind: cognitive enhancement through transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Psychological medicine · 2026Pooled it
- The puzzle of profitless pre-cues.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Pooled it
- Rethinking exercise dose for cognitive ageing: a systematic review and meta-analysis of physical dose and cognitive-motor demands.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Pooled it
- Acute effects of psilocybin on attention and executive functioning in healthy volunteers: a systematic review and multilevel meta-analysis.Psychopharmacology · 2025Pooled it
- Insights into the neural mechanisms supporting cognitive stability and flexibility from human intracranial electroencephalography.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2026Review
- Learning and Using Different Task Rule Updating Strategies Require Extensive Practice.Cognitive science · 2026Article
- Psychedelics do not always enhance cognitive flexibility: The potential role of time-varying effects on reward learning processes.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2026Review
- Adaptive behavior is guided by integrated representations of controlled and non-controlled information.eLife · 2026Article
- Changes in Aperiodic (1/f Slope) Activity During a Picture-Word Interference Task: Effects of Congruency and Sequence Manipulations.Psychophysiology · 2026Article
- Sex-biased computations underlying differential set shift performance in mice.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Competing speech streams are simultaneously represented in the human cortex during attention switching.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Age-Related Differences in Neural Networks for Error Detection and Inhibitory Control: A LORETA-Based Comparative Study.Brain sciences · 2026Article
- 2D mental whiteboards: Multidimensional spatial coding of serial order in verbal working memory.Psychological research · 2026Article
- The development of FEDUPP: feeding experimentation device users processing package to assess learning and cognitive flexibility.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- Expected level of target cues determines prospective memory strategic processing: The effect of task switching.iScience · 2026Article
- A cross-sectional study of executive and semantic flexibility in childhood using task-switching.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- People are sensitive to environmental predictability when engaging cognitive control.Memory & cognition · 2026Article
- Flexible brain state engagement predicts cognitive control transdiagnostically.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Is four the same as 4? Exploring whether stimulus repetitions or identity repetitions drive voluntary task choice.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2026Article
- Task-control adaptation in task switching: Uncovering the mechanisms behind the list-wide proportion valency effect.Memory & cognition · 2026Article
3 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
Abstract
Adaptive behaviour requires the ability to focus on a task and protect it from distraction (cognitive stability) and to rapidly switch tasks when circumstances change (cognitive flexibility). Burgeoning research literatures have aimed to understand how people achieve task focus and task switch readiness. In this Perspective, I integrate these literatures to derive a cognitive architecture and functional rules underlying the regulation of cognitive stability and flexibility. I propose that task focus and task switch readiness are supported by independent mechanisms. However, I also suggest that the strategic regulation of both mechanisms is governed by shared learning principles: an incremental, online learner that nudges control up or down based on the recent history of task demands (a recency heuristic) and episodic reinstatement when the current context matches a past experience (a recognition heuristic). Finally, I discuss algorithmic and neural implementations of these processes, as well as clinical implications.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.