Cognitive Flexibility and Higher-Order Executive Function¶
Scope: Task-set reconfiguration (set shifting), rule updating, strategy selection, goal maintenance. Current inhabitants: goal maintenance, set shifting, strategy use.
Out of scope: Fluid intelligence (an individual-difference construct, not a process); working-memory updating (in Short-Term and Working Memory); “cognitive flexibility” as a capacity-level umbrella (alias on hed_set_shifting).
Note
Open issues: The user has earlier flagged that attentional flexibility and mental flexibility should perhaps be separate sub-processes — deferred.
This category contains 3 processes.
Goal maintenance¶
Process ID: hed_goal_maintenance
Active holding of task goals, rules, or sub-goals in a form that biases ongoing processing.
Tasks that engage this process: Task Switching Task
Fundamental references
Miller & Cohen (2001) Annual Review of Neuroscience 24:167–202 (DOI)
Further references
Kane & Engle (2003) JEP: General 132:47–70 (DOI)
Set shifting¶
Process ID: hed_set_shifting
Also known as: Cognitive flexibility - Broader construct encompassing set shifting, perspective-taking, and adaptive strategy use; it fails the single-answer inclusion test, and set shifting is its primary experimental operationalization.; task switching; task-switching
Flexible reconfiguration of the task set in response to a change in task demands; the primary experimental operationalization of cognitive flexibility, measured by task-switching paradigms and the WCST.
Tasks that engage this process: Prospective Memory Task, Reversal Learning Task, Task Switching Task, Trail Making Task, Wisconsin Card Sorting Task
Fundamental references
Monsell (2003) Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7:134–140 (DOI, PubMed)
Diamond (2013) Annual Review of Psychology 64:135–168 (DOI)
Further references
Strategy use¶
Process ID: hed_strategy_use
Selection and implementation of a cognitive procedure chosen to improve performance on a task.
Tasks that engage this process: Multi-Armed Bandit Task, Prisoner’s Dilemma Task, Probabilistic Classification Learning Task, Tower of London Task, Virtual Morris Water Maze Task, Wisconsin Card Sorting Task
Fundamental references
Siegler (1987) JEP: General 116:250–264 (DOI)