Cognitive flexibility means being able to adapt and change your thinking easily. It's like being able to switch gears in your brain and quickly come up with new solutions or ideas when faced with different situations or problems.
Full definition
ACT supports
cognitive flexibility in addition to encouraging individuals to observe and allow difficult thoughts feelings, emotions and experiences to simply occur.
Previous studies have shown that
greater cognitive flexibility relates to better reading abilities as a child, resilience as an adult, and quality of life in the advanced years.
If their model is validated, it will provide a strong foundation for researchers to use as a basis in determining what may be wrong in individuals with
impaired cognitive flexibility.
Cognitive flexibility becomes important when trying to find the correct solutions to a problem, particularly when your first attempt at solving that problem does not work.
Last but not least, you are more than welcome to view the following video that Rand Spiro, professor of educational psychology at College of Education, Michigan State University, talks about
Cognitive Flexibility Theory (CFT).
Combined effect sizes for EF revealed a decrement of 0.57 SD for verbal fluency, 0.36 SD for working memory, and 0.49 SD
for cognitive flexibility in comparison to controls.
In the paper, the researchers analyzed the existing literature and neuroimaging studies
on cognitive flexibility and put forth a hypothesis regarding the fundamental neural mechanisms of this important faculty.
A study of foster children found these kids developed
better cognitive flexibility and perspective - taking skills if their caregivers had been trained to «follow the child's lead» by delivering sensitive, responsive, nurturing care (Lewis - Morrarty 2013).
«By understanding how the brain attempts to
implement cognitive flexibility in a neurodevelopmental disorder like autism, we can better understand the nature of the disorder,» said Dina R. Dajani, Ph.D. student of psychology in the UM College of Arts & Sciences and first author of the study.
Despite their success at memorization, they haven't developed the conceptual understanding or
cognitive flexibility needed to respond to these unpredictable questions.
A variety of laboratory studies have begun to map out in detail cases where dogs
show cognitive flexibility and cases where they are constrained or show biases in their problem solving [12 — 20].
«Our concept is quite different from other conceptualizations of
cognitive flexibility because we describe it as arising from four separate cognitive operations, whereas other researchers have described it as a manifestation of a single cognitive operation,» Dajani said.
In a new study published in the journal Psychological Medicine, researchers looked at
whether cognitive flexibility for learning tasks and goal - directed control was impaired early in the development of OCD.
In a new paper published in the journal Trends in Neurosciences, University of Miami (UM) College of Arts & Sciences researchers clarify many of the concepts
surrounding cognitive flexibility and propose a model of its underlying neural mechanisms.
«Therefore, the superior performance on these conflict tasks appears to be due to bilinguals»
strengthened cognitive flexibility and selective attention abilities as they have increased experience in switching across languages in expressive vocabulary.»
Compared with those who received no hormone treatment, athletes in the two estrogen treatment groups taken together had significantly better verbal memory and
cognitive flexibility scores at the end of six months than their pre-treatment scores, the investigators reported.
«A lot of work in cognitive aging focuses on memory, but in
fact cognitive flexibility and other executive functions have been shown to better predict daily functioning than memory does,» she said.
In the water T - maze test, which measures spatial learning during acquisition and
cognitive flexibility during recall, 16 month - old C3 - deficient mice performed significantly better compared to WT controls.
Children who quiet their minds and practice self - reflection boost development in the frontal lobes where the executive functions for paying attention, emotional regulation, and
cognitive flexibility reside.
Cognitive flexibility explains how teacher candidates, having engaged with the SWAP during their teacher preparation coursework, might learn to adapt those practices to diverse learners in different classroom contexts.
Results showed that preschool - aged foster children who had received the ABC intervention showed
stronger cognitive flexibility and theory of mind skills, relative to foster children who had received a control intervention.
Crone EA, Ridderinkhof KR, Worm M, Somsen RJ, van der Molen MW (2004) Switching between spatial stimulus - response mappings: a developmental study
of cognitive flexibility.
The analysis suggests, but does not prove, that consuming DHA and EPA, two omega - 3 fatty acids found in fish,
enhanced cognitive flexibility in these adults in part by beefing up the anterior cingulate cortex, the researchers report in the journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience.
A study of foster children found these kids developed
better cognitive flexibility and perspective - taking skills if their caregivers had been trained to «follow the child's lead» by delivering sensitive, responsive, nurturing care (Lewis - Morrarty 2013).
The researchers suggest four components that work together to
implement cognitive flexibility: salience detection / attention (both achieve similar goals to direct attention to behaviorally relevant events), working memory, inhibition and switching.