Abstract
Cognitive flexibility – the ability to adjust one ´s behavior to changing environmental demands – is crucial for controlled behavior. However, the term ‘cognitive flexibility’ is used heterogeneously, and associations between cognitive flexibility and other facets of flexible behavior have only rarely been studied systematically. To resolve some of these conceptual uncertainties, we directly compared cognitive flexibility (cue-instructed switching between two affectively neutral tasks), affective flexibility (switching between a neutral and an affective task using emotional stimuli), and feedback-based flexibility (non-cued, feedback-dependent switching between two neutral tasks). Three experimental paradigms were established that share as many procedural features (in terms of stimuli and/or task rules) as possible and administered in a pre-registered study plan (N = 100). Correlation analyses revealed significant associations between the efficiency of cognitive and affective task switching (response time switch costs). Feedback-based flexibility (measured as mean number of errors after rule reversals) did not correlate with task switching efficiency in the other paradigms, but selectively with the effectiveness of affective switching (error rate costs when switching from neutral to emotion task). While preregistered confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) provided no clear evidence for a shared factor underlying the efficiency of switching in all three domains of flexibility, an exploratory CFA suggested commonalities regarding switching effectiveness (accuracy-based switch costs). We propose shared mechanisms controlling the efficiency of cue-dependent task switching across domains, while the relationship to feedback-based flexibility may depend on mechanisms controlling switching effectiveness. Our results call for a more stringent conceptual differentiation between different variants of psychological flexibility.
Highlights
Cognitive flexibility, i.e., the ability to instantaneously and flexibly adjust one’s behavior and thoughts to changing environmental demands describes a key characteristic of cognitive control and is crucial for daily functioning and the pursuit of short- or long-term goals (Miyake et al, 2000; Scott, 1962)
Affective Flexibility To investigate switching to and from affective materials, we developed a new paradigm that is a combination of the above-described cognitive flexibility task and an affective task switching paradigm described by Dierolf and colleagues (2016)
To resolve conceptual heterogeneity associated with the term cognitive flexibility (e.g., Ionescu, 2012) and to systematically explore associations with affective flexibility, the present study investigated inter-relations among three different facets of flexible thought and behavior, i.e., cognitive, affective, and feedback-based flexibility
Summary
I.e., the ability to instantaneously and flexibly adjust one’s behavior and thoughts to changing environmental demands describes a key characteristic of cognitive control and is crucial for daily functioning and the pursuit of short- or long-term goals (Miyake et al, 2000; Scott, 1962). Empirical investigations of cognitive flexibility strongly focus on experimental paradigms involving instructed task switching. Participants are explicitly instructed by a cue stimulus to switch between two (or sometimes more, e.g., Piguet et al, 2013) task rules applied to the same type of stimulus. As this requires the active suppression of the ‘old’ ( irrelevant) task rule while the ’new‘ and currently relevant task rule has to be activated, task switching is cognitively more demanding repeating the same task (Vandierendonck et al, 2010).
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