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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Dec 19, 2025

Operant Procedures for Assessing Behavioral Flexibility in Rats

Operant Procedures for Assessing Behavioral Flexibility in Rats

Published on: February 15, 2015

Contextual Adaptation of Cognitive Flexibility is driven by Task- and Item-Level Learning.

Audrey Siqi-Liu¹, Tobias Egner^2,3

¹Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC, 27708, USA. audrey.liu@duke.edu.

Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience

|June 5, 2020

Summary

People adapt their cognitive stability-flexibility tradeoff by learning to associate switch readiness with cues. This list-wide proportion switch effect (LWPSE) is specific to task sets and stimuli, not generalized.

Keywords:

Cognitive flexibility Meta-control Switch proportion Task switching

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The Attentional Set Shifting Task: A Measure of Cognitive Flexibility in Mice

Published on: February 4, 2015

Area of Science:

Cognitive psychology
Neuroscience
Behavioral science

Background:

Adaptive behavior involves balancing cognitive stability and flexibility.
Cognitive flexibility adjustments are seen in task-switching paradigms.
The list-wide proportion switch effect (LWPSE) shows decreased switch costs with increased switch trial proportions, but its mechanisms are unknown.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the learning mechanisms underlying the list-wide proportion switch effect (LWPSE).
To determine if LWPSE generalizes to unbiased tasks or is specific to task sets and stimuli.

Main Methods:

Four behavioral experiments were conducted.
Participants performed cued task-switching paradigms with varying switch trial proportions.
Experiments manipulated the number of tasks, task predictability, and task/stimulus bias.

Main Results:

The basic LWPSE was replicated.
LWPSE persisted even when the next task was unpredictable.
LWPSE was specific to biased tasks and stimuli, not generalizing to unbiased transfer tasks.

Conclusions:

Switch cost modulations are task set and/or task stimulus-specific.
Individuals learn to associate context-appropriate switch readiness with predictive cues.
This demonstrates adaptive adjustments in the stability-flexibility tradeoff based on learned associations.