Approche de la flexibilité cognitive dans la problématique de la résolution de problème

Abstract

This paper is a contribution to the definition of a complex behavioral process: the cognitive flexibility. By examining the literature, the different definitions lead to conclude that this notion is highly influenced by the tests used to measure a flexible behavior. We attempt to unify this notion and present an approach of the cognitive flexibility in the framework of the problem solving situations. These situations allow to identify two forms of flexibility, reactive and spontaneous flexibility, and the expression of perseverative behavior. We show how the well-known “water-jug volume-measuring problems” (Luchins, 1942) are well-suited to observe both these kind of flexibility. In those situations, spontaneous flexibility is interpreted as the capacity of adopting spontaneously different points of view on a same situation, even when reactive flexibility occurs in impasse situations and may lead either to the change of the procedure or to the elaboration of a new representation. In conclusion, we discuss how this approach permits to reinterpret in the same framework the phenomena of the fixation described by the Gestalt psychology and the perseverative behavior related in the more recent neuropsychological literature.