Sackur, J.
Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, École Normale Supérieure, Paris, France
Task switching is one of the major paradigms used to explore the flexibility of executive control of cognition. In the task-cuing procedure, a cue instructs the subject which task is to be performed on a target that affords two possible tasks. Switch costs are obtained by comparing performances in repeated trials versus switch trials. Although this procedure can be refined so as to disentangle effects of cue and task switches, the level at which switches impact performances may still be unclear. Here, I introduce a novel procedure to probe task-set reconfiguration and cognitive control modulation: a third task, based on imperative targets unrelated to the cues is interspersed among traditional task switching trials. This third task enables me to probe modulations of cognitive control irrespective of any performance effects on primary, cue-related targets. Results show that probe trials are slowed after a switch, and that this effect is reduced for long cue-stimulus intervals. This shows that task switching cues induce endogenous adaptations of cognitive control that cannot be explained by stimulus-level factors.