Jun 25th 2021

IQ tests can’t measure it, but ‘cognitive flexibility’ is key to learning and creativity

by Barbara Jacquelyn Sahakian, Christelle Langley and Victoria Leong

 

Barbara Jacquelyn Sahakian, Professor of Clinical Neuropsychology, University of Cambridge

Christelle Langley, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Cambridge

Victoria Leong, Affiliated Lecturer of Psychology, University of Cambridge

 

IQ is often hailed as a crucial driver of success, particularly in fields such as science, innovation and technology. In fact, many people have an endless fascination with the IQ scores of famous people. But the truth is that some of the greatest achievements by our species have primarily relied on qualities such as creativity, imagination, curiosity and empathy.

Many of these traits are embedded in what scientists call “cognitive flexibility” – a skill that enables us to switch between different concepts, or to adapt behaviour to achieve goals in a novel or changing environment. It is essentially about learning to learn and being able to be flexible about the way you learn. This includes changing strategies for optimal decision-making. In our ongoing research, we are trying to work out how people can best boost their cognitive flexibility.

Cognitive flexibility provides us with the ability to see that what we are doing is not leading to success and to make the appropriate changes to achieve it. If you normally take the same route to work, but there are now roadworks on your usual route, what do you do? Some people remain rigid and stick to the original plan, despite the delay. More flexible people adapt to the unexpected event and problem-solve to find a solution.

Cognitive flexibility may have affected how people coped with the pandemic lockdowns, which produced new challenges around work and schooling. Some of us found it easier than others to adapt our routines to do many activities from home. Such flexible people may also have changed these routines from time to time, trying to find better and more varied ways of going about their day. Others, however, struggled and ultimately became more rigid in their thinking. They stuck to the same routine activities, with little flexibility or change.

Huge advantages

Flexible thinking is key to creativity – in other words, the ability to think of new ideas, make novel connections between ideas, and make new inventions. It also supports academic and work skills such as problem solving. That said, unlike working memory – how much you can remember at a certain time – it is largely independent of IQ, or “crystallised intelligence”. For example, many visual artists may be of average intelligence, but highly creative and have produced masterpieces.

Contrary to many people’s beliefs, creativity is also important in science and innovation. For example, we have discovered that entrepreneurs who have created multiple companies are more cognitively flexible than managers of a similar age and IQ.

So does cognitive flexibility make people smarter in a way that isn’t always captured on IQ tests? We know that it leads to better “cold cognition”, which is non-emotional or “rational” thinking, throughout the lifespan. For example, for children it leads to better reading abilities and better school performance.

It can also help protect against a number of biases, such as confirmation bias. That’s because people who are cognitively flexible are better at recognising potential faults in themselves and using strategies to overcome these faults.

Cognitive flexibility is also associated with higher resilience to negative life events, as well as better quality of life in older individuals. It can even be beneficial in emotional and social cognition: studies have shown that cognitive flexibility has a strong link to the ability to understand the emotions, thoughts and intentions of others.

The opposite of cognitive flexibility is cognitive rigidity, which is found in a number of mental health disorders including obsessive-compulsive disorder, major depressive disorder and autism spectrum disorder.

Neuroimaging studies have shown that cognitive flexibility is dependent on a network of frontal and “striatal” brain regions. The frontal regions are associated with higher cognitive processes such as decision-making and problem solving. The striatal regions are instead linked with reward and motivation.

There are a number of ways to objectively assess people’s cognitive flexibility, including the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and the CANTAB Intra-Extra Dimensional Set Shift Task.

Boosting flexibility

The good news is that it seems you can train cognitive flexibility. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), for example, is an evidence-based psychological therapy which helps people change their patterns of thoughts and behaviour. For example, a person with depression who has not been contacted by a friend in a week may attribute this to the friend no longer liking them. In CBT, the goal is to reconstruct their thinking to consider more flexible options, such as the friend being busy or unable to contact them.

Structure learning – the ability to extract information about the structure of a complex environment and decipher initially incomprehensible streams of sensory information – is another potential way forward. We know that this type of learning involves similar frontal and striatal brain regions as cognitive flexibility.

In a collaboration between the University of Cambridge and Nanyang Technological University, we are currently working on a “real world” experiment to determine whether structural learning can actually lead to improved cognitive flexibility.

Studies have shown the benefits of training cognitive flexibility, for example in children with autism. After training cognitive flexibility, the children showed not only improved performance on cognitive tasks, but also improved social interaction and communication. In addition, cognitive flexibility training has been shown to be beneficial for children without autism and in older adults.

As we come out of the pandemic, we will need to ensure that in teaching and training new skills, people also learn to be cognitively flexible in their thinking. This will provide them with greater resilience and wellbeing in the future.

Cognitive flexibility is essential for society to flourish. It can help maximise the potential of individuals to create innovative ideas and creative inventions. Ultimately, it is such qualities we need to solve the big challenges of today, including global warming, preservation of the natural world, clean and sustainable energy and food security.

 

Professors Trevor Robbins, Annabel Chen and Zoe Kourtzi also contributed to this article.

Barbara Jacquelyn Sahakian, Professor of Clinical Neuropsychology, University of Cambridge; Christelle Langley, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Cambridge, and Victoria Leong, Affiliated Lecturer of Psychology, University of Cambridge

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Browse articles by author

More Essays

Sep 18th 2014

Note to my readers: This essay is a follow-up to my rereading of Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse that is more personal essay than review and

Sep 13th 2014

The first time I fell in love was in the children’s section of Brooke Park library. I was eleven and she was ten and her name was Josephine and she had so many freckles on her face that she was a haze of delight.

Sep 4th 2014

In 1962, Bob Dylan told an interviewer: "The songs are there. They exist all by themselves, just waiting for someone to write them down.

Sep 2nd 2014

Almost daily, we are faced by difficult choices we are challenged to confront over a range of foreign and domestic policy concerns.

Aug 19th 2014

The New Atheists are once again provoking controversy, this time with their comments on Gaza which has prompted divisions among those better known for presenting a united front against religion.

Aug 16th 2014

I applaud those who retain the strength to fight the never-ending battle against ignorance, intolerance and persistent persecution of rationalists.

Aug 13th 2014

Humor is an essential part of the human experience. We tend to think of comedy as frivolous, a side show to the miseries of hunger, disease, and poverty that visit the vast majority of the global population.

Aug 11th 2014


ISIS
 in Iraq is murdering Christians and Shia Muslims alike under the guise of a Holy War.

Aug 7th 2014

In a broad sense of that term, reading Max Tegmark's Our Mathematical Universe is akin to a religious experience. I would not be at all surprised if Tegmark felt a similar sense of excitement in writing this massively learned yet wonderfully accessible book.

Jul 27th 2014

Note to my readers: This essay is a follow-up to

Jul 25th 2014
Many professional authors are also parents, but recently, there have been a number of success stories of parents simply writing for their own children and becoming very successful.
Jul 18th 2014

I make it a year and four months since Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected pope. In the light of this I was interested to read that he (Pope Francis as he became) had his first interview with a female journalist just three weeks ago.

Jul 17th 2014

Whatever happened to that steely British resolve, that famous Churchillian stiff upper lip?  When did the English become as whiny as we Americans?

Jul 14th 2014

A HuffPost blogger with expertise in publishing suggests there are still 5 reasons to get a de

Jul 10th 2014

The summer of 1961 was one of my favorites: Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris were hitting home runs, Whitey Ford was winning games, and "Who Put the Bomp" was a big hit on my transistor radio.

Jul 9th 2014

This is an Excerpt from my new book 

Jul 5th 2014

Ah for every one step forward two steps backward.

Jul 3rd 2014

Let's be honest. Sure some smart young people who "come to Christ" are deeply sincere.

Jun 30th 2014

Very recently I heard a young Israeli called Yehuda Shaul being interviewed on Radio Ulster.

Jun 26th 2014

A reader has asked me to comment on the poem in Robert Hass’s book titled “Human Wishes” that I discuss in  my essay Robert Hass, poet: Meaning and Form and Pleasure.