In contrast, cognitive shifting is a very similar executive function, but it involves conscious (not unconscious) change in attention.
Deficits in task switching are commonly observed in patients with Parkinson's disease,[1][2] and in those on the autism spectrum.
[3][4] Human behavior and cognition are characterized by the ability to adapt to a dynamic environment, whether in attention, action, or both.
This ability to shift attention and action adaptively has been investigated in the laboratory since the first use of the task switching paradigm by Jersild (1927).
[5] This paradigm examines the control processes that reconfigure mental resources for a change of task by requiring subjects to complete a set of simple, yet engaging interleaving operations that must be performed in an alternating or repeating sequence.
The switch cost remains even when there is ample warning of an upcoming switch, thus it is thought to reflect the functioning of numerous executive control processes ranging from attention shifting, goal retrieval, task set reconfiguration processes, and inhibition of prior task set.
To overcome these problems, the alternating-runs procedure was introduced in which subjects alternate between short runs of different tasks (e.g., AABBAABB).
Incomplete inhibition is thought to be responsible for the residual costs that occur even after long cue-stimulus intervals.
[5][9] An important challenge for future research is to determine whether active or passive processes overcome task-set priming.
[10] PsyToolkit (free software) provides a web-based task switching measure based on the Rogers and Monsell (1995) alternating-task procedure.