#Note/Permanent #Psychology #CognitiveScience #TaskSet Task sets[^1] refer to the organization of cognitive processes and mental representations that enable a person to act in accordance with task requirements. For instance, consider the task of writing an essay on climate change. The cognitive processes involved might include researching (gathering information), organizing thoughts (planning the essay's structure), and writing (translating thoughts into words). Mental representations would encompass one's knowledge and understanding of climate change, incorporating facts, theories, and personal beliefs or attitudes about the topic. To complete a task, a task set must include the representation of task-relevant stimuli, task-relevant responses, and the corresponding S-R (stimulus-response) mappings. For certain tasks, S-R mappings are relatively straightforward because they are highly overlearned. Examples include word reading or object naming; in these cases, we don't need to relearn how to recognize the word (stimulus), pronounce it (response), and match the pronunciation with the written word (S-R mapping). However, for other tasks where such stimuli, responses, and mappings have not been previously learned, we must first acquire this knowledge to accomplish the task. Drawing an analogy with programming, setting up a task set is similar to caching. When a cache mapping exists, where a key points to a value, retrieving the value upon recognizing the key is much faster. However, in the case of a cache miss, we need to learn the key, calculate the value, and map them together, storing them as a new cache entry. In this analogy, the task-relevant stimulus is akin to the key, the task-relevant response to the value, and the S-R mapping to the cache entry. Once the cache is set up, it facilitates faster performance of certain tasks. [^1]: [Control and interference in task switching -- A review](https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2010-17510-006)