Figure 1.

Schematic of the task-switching paradigm. The leftmost column shows the monitor display, the next columns illustrate the task-set preparation and stimulus processing requirements as well as the required response. The rightmost column presents the trial type as defined by task sequence and response–congruency of the task-relevant and irrelevant stimulus attributes (i.e., size vs. color). The trial code specifies the processing requirements, whether the trial necessitates a task switch (s1) or not (s0), and whether the response–relevant and irrelevant stimulus attributes are associated with incongruent responses (i1) or not (i0). Trial 1 would be a task-repeat trial if the preceding warm-up trial (not shown here) was a color classification trial, too. Trial types were balanced but their pseudo-random sequence was unpredictable for participants.