Attention and cognitive control: Evidence from task switching

Implementing and performing a task requires cognitive control to establish a corresponding mental task set. This set serves to bias input processing (i.e., attentional control of perception), establish required perception-action mappings, and to ensure proper action execution (motor control). Here I will review studies designed to isolate particular elements of task set. Specifically, I report studies on the flexibility of attention in selective listening and crossmodal switching tasks. We also report studies exploring control of between-task crosstalk in perception-action mappings and on bilingual language switching. Based on these findings, we conceptualize task set as an emergent property resulting from facilitative and inhibitory biasing of task-specific representations.