cognitive flexibility
Summary
Cognitive flexibility is the ability to shift between tasks, mental sets, or strategies and to adapt thinking when rules or circumstances change. It is an executive function linked to the prefrontal cortex. The exam often contrasts it with perseveration, mental set, and functional fixedness.
Detail
Meaning: Cognitive flexibility is the ability to switch between concepts or tasks, hold several ideas in mind, and change strategy when rules or demands change. It is grouped with the executive functions, along with working memory and inhibition, and is associated with the prefrontal cortex. A flexible thinker drops a strategy that has stopped working and tries another.
On the MCAT: Expect it in passages on problem solving, executive function, or frontal lobe damage. A classic setup is a card-sorting task in which the sorting rule changes without warning. A person with poor flexibility keeps using the old rule, which is called perseveration. Functional fixedness (seeing an object only in its usual function) and mental set (repeating an approach that worked before) are barriers to problem solving that reflect low flexibility.
Common confusion: Flexibility is not the same as intelligence or memory. A person can recall well and still fail to shift strategy. It is also broader than Piaget's accommodation, which is modifying a schema to fit new information. Cognitive flexibility is the ongoing ability to shift among rules, tasks, and viewpoints.
Sources
- Psychology (Myers)
- Psychology (Schacter, Gilbert, Wegner)
Written for the MCAT and checked before it was published. For study reference only. Spotted an error? Let us know.