Humans can learn new tasks with remarkable efficiency, regulate task focus, and swiftly switch back and forth between different tasks. The cognitive processes that allow for such goal-directed behavior are typically ascribed to cognitive control or executive functions. Building on recent insights within and outside our lab, from fundamental research on cognitive control, artificial intelligence, and developmental psychology, this project breaks with traditional views on cognitive control, and will demonstrate how people dynamically learn and develop cognitive control processes. This project will use engaging, gamified paradigms that can study this learning and generalization of cues for cognitive control across days, and study how our semantic knowledge helps structure the learning and representation of different cognitive control processes. We will also apply our ideas and paradigms to study the development of cognitive control processes in children. By revealing how control processes strategies evolve and solidify over time, this project aims to illuminate the mechanisms that help define the nature and role of cognitive control processes in an ever-changing world.