Cognitive Flexibility – Importance

” cognitive flexibility may possibly be considered the pinnacle of cognitive control. Other control processes are important for maintain- ing and protecting our current goals and task sets (e.g., by selectively attending to goal-relevant stimuli and inhibiting habitual responses), but it is one’s overarch- ing ability to flexibly change these goals and task sets that produces adaptive behavior. Cognitive flexibility can thus be seen as a form of metacontrol”^​1​

Education

” Mental flexibility is important for academic problem-solving. Academically, children with difficulties with cognitive flexibility tend to learn by a rote strategy—memorizing through repetition. However, as curricula become more complex, children are expected to learn by abstraction—taking what they know and applying it to a new learning situation “^​2​ ” Children who struggle with mental flexibility (sometimes referred to as cognitive flexibility) often get “stuck” on one way to solve a problem, or get fixated on an inefficient strategy. They may also focus in on a detail of a problem and lose the big picture. “^​2​ ” Without flexibility, children tend to have difficulty when a problem is slightly different than what they learned, or if they are asked to synthesize what they know to solve a new problem. “^​2​ ” You may find that when your child is stuck on a homework problem, you get resistance when you offer to help because it’s not the way the teacher taught the problem. Your child may even have a strong emotional reaction to being asked to do things differently, even when it is in the spirit of helping her get unstuck. ” ^​2​

” Being able to think flexibly is the key to solving problems that may arise, whether it be a new math problem, a change in routine, or a social challenge on the playground “^​2​ ” For example, if a child is working on a drawing and you say it is time to go to school, he is not thinking that you want him to be at school on time, or that the teacher is expecting him, or that if you don’t get him to school on time you will be late for work. He is only thinking about wanting to do his drawing and may become upset when he has to stop. “^​3​

Work

” Among the various components of executive functioning, cognitive flexibility is particularly rele- vant to occupational performance and shift work. “^​4​ In one 5 year longitudal study of Bipolar patients and occupational outcomes, a number of “clinical, demographic, and neurocognitive features” were recorded, but more than any other feature, ” “Greater deficits in cognitive flexibility predicted more difficulty with overall work functioning and quality of work” ^​5​ ” “Cognitive flexibility deficits were associated with greater attendance problems and poorer work performance suggesting that addressing these particular cognitive impairments in treatment may also enhance one’s ability to perform their job and increase attendance at work”^​5​

” Occupational settings often require workers to monitor the environment for various stimuli and information, each of which may require a different response. For example, nurses on the night shift may need to respond to different diagnostic or therapeutic information in addition to the patients’ emotional, behavioral, and physiological states in order to provide appropriate care. “^​4​ ” Cognitive flexibility also enables effective adaptation to a dynamic environment. This is critical to workers engaged in safety-sensitive operations such as emergency responders, security personnel, or chemical plant operators, all of whom routinely work in shifts to maintain 24-h operations. The environ- ment in safety-sensitive operations can be prone to abrupt changes and therefore requires not only sus- tained vigilance but also the ability to flexibly switch attention from one task to another in an accurate and effective manner. Efficiency and flexibility of perfor- mance is critical in these contexts because delayed responses can dramatically impact outcome (e.g., fatalities, severity of injuries, etc.) “^​4​

” Reduced cognitive flexibility in returning to prior tasks also has implications for occupational performance. Results indicated that deficits in set inhibition were associated with reduced accuracy, specifically with greater occurrences of perseverative errors. This reduction in productivity can be expensive and there- fore can have a significant economic impact. Furthermore, deficits in set inhibition may also inter- fere with learning and enacting novel tasks due to perseveration on the old task. With the perpetual development and adoption of new technology, there might be an increased demand for workers to learn and implement new protocols, thereby increasing the impact of such deficits “^​4​ ” Furthermore, both compo- nents of cognitive flexibility differentially impacted aspects of task performance; whereas deficits in set switching reduced task efficiency, deficits in set inhi- bition reduced accuracy with increased perseverative errors. These results have implications for occupa- tional performance “^​4​

Furthermore, issues with cognitive flexibility are especially notable for those doing shift work (or working nights.) This is likely do in part to night shift workers often having to make up for reduced nighttime staffing (as with nurses), which increases their cognitive load and multitasking thus need for increased cognitive flexibility,^​4​ but also ” shift workers who are malad-justed to the night shift schedule experience deficits in cognitive flexibility in addition to well-documented deficits in sustained attention and processing speed “^​4​ ” As predicted, results indicated that circadian phase was a unique predictor of switch cost above and beyond symptoms of sleepiness and insomnia to be problematic for task per- formance. “^​4​ ” Furthermore, results also suggest that specific domains of cognitive flexibility are differentially associated with circadian phase in relation to the work schedule versus symptoms of nocturnal sleepiness and daytime insomnia, which have implications for improving occupational performance and safety “^​4​ ” Results pertaining to set inhibition indicate that the ability to flexibly return to a previously performed task is not associated with the circadian phase and is instead differentially associated with symptoms of sleepiness and insomnia. “^​4​ ” Taken together, these data suggest that maladjusted night shift workers may demonstrate reduced cognitive flexibility relative to the general population, particularly in the latter portion of a typical night shift, “^​4​

Socializing & Relationships

“Being flexible is an adaptive skill, in both academic and social realms. Flexible kids are more liked by peers as well as adults. “^​2,3​ ” Another aspect of cognitive flexibility is the concept of social flexibility. Part of social flexibility is the notion that we think about the ideas, feelings, and actions of others. “^​2​ “Social rules are always changing depending on the situation. For example, the volume of your voice changes when you are in class and when you are on the playground. Your level of chattiness and self-disclosure depends on whom you are talking to and where you are.”^​2​ ” You have to read social cues in “real time” to see if someone is no longer interested in what you are saying, or if you’ve offended him by what you’ve said. You need flexibility to adapt to changing social situations. “^​2​ ” Cognitive fl exibility involves the ability to rapidly switch between multiple tasks (Monsell, 2003 ) and may therefore be crucial for the ability to change strategies or perspective during everyday conversation. “^​6​

“Especially when children get older, there are more “unwritten” rules. Kids no longer say, “I don’t want to play with you” directly; instead they may make excuses or avoid you, or even be nice to you in person but then talk negatively about you when you are not there. These types of social situations can be complicated for a child or teen with executive functioning challenges in mental flexibility to understand and adapt to. “^​2​ ” Children with social flexibility problems may only consider their own vantage point, which creates a problem when things don’t go their way or when someone asks them to do something that wasn’t their own idea “^​3​ ” n the both the academic and social worlds, children and adolescents with cognitive flexibility challenges often get stuck on one way to do a task. “^​3​” Or, in the social realm, during a play date your child may make up his own rules to a board game and refuse to play by any other rules. He may also get upset if he’s building something and the other child tries to join in and “messes everything up.”^​3​ ” My child sometimes seems to have a “my way or the highway” mentality when interacting with other children. “^​3​

” The ability to take another person’s perspective and to understand that others have different thoughts, feelings, and intentions than your own is called “theory of mind.” Children with difficulties with theory of mind tend to have flexibility issues because they tend to consider only their own viewpoint. “^​3​ ” Children on the autism spectrum often have difficulties with cognitive flexibility in social problem-solving. Research shows that one potential cause is that they often do not engage in “self-talk.” While typical children will talk through their problem-solving ideas in their head, children on the spectrum may not. However, the good news is that teaching children to talk through ideas has been shown to improve cognitive flexibility. “^​3​

” In the social world, you may find yourself offering advice about how to solve a social problem that is not well-received. For example, you may ask your child, “Why don’t you play the game your friend wants to play this time, and then next time you can play a game you want to play?” and be met with a meltdown. “^​3​

Health

” In adults, cognitive inflexibility is is associated with clinical symptoms such as rumination [61] and longer duration of eating disorder illness “^​7​ “Further, anomalies in flexibility are thought to characterize various clinical disorders “^​1​

Life

” Being adaptable to one’s environment is an essential life skill. Life is not always predictable, and children and adolescents need strategies to cope with unexpected problems or events. “^​2​ ” For children and adolescents with cognitive flexibility challenges, changes in routine can be upsetting. They may want to take the same route to school every day. They have a strong preference for “sameness”—the same jacket, the same lunchbox, the same order of doing tasks, the same food. They may get upset when there is a change in family plans, or a change in the school schedule “^​3​ ” In recent studies it was indeed shown that children with ASD are relatively cog- nitive infl exible when switches occur random and unpredictable. “^​6​ ” In sum, unpredictability, high WM load, the lack of explicit task instructions, and reduced novelty processing might all contribute to the observed day-to-day diffi culties in cognitive fl ex- ibility. “^​6​

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