Howlett Caitlin A, Miles Stephanie, Berryman Carolyn, Phillipou Andrea, Moseley G Lorimer
Innovation, Implementation & Clinical Translation (IIMPACT) in Health, University of South Australia, Kaurna Country, Adelaide, Australia.
Centre for Mental Health, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia.
Aust J Psychol. 2023 Feb 19;75(1):2174684. doi: 10.1080/00049530.2023.2174684. eCollection 2023.
Cognitive flexibility is a widely studied construct and is considered an important treatment target for several psychological disorders. The convergence of several independent fields of research has led to assumptions about the assessment of cognitive flexibility - assumptions that are not empirically supported and often conflate different notions of flexibility. This critical review discusses how the conflation of self-report and neurocognitive assessments has seemingly arisen from literature on eating disorders. We describe how seminal early observations of "inflexible" personality characteristics, communication competence research, and investigations of frontal lobe function after injury led to two methods of assessing "cognitive flexibility". We discuss the impact that conflation of self-report and neurocognitive assessments has had on the field, and we provide recommendations for assessing cognitive flexibility in both research and clinical settings.
认知灵活性是一个被广泛研究的概念，被认为是几种心理障碍的重要治疗目标。多个独立研究领域的融合导致了关于认知灵活性评估的假设——这些假设缺乏实证支持，且常常混淆了不同的灵活性概念。这篇批判性综述讨论了自我报告和神经认知评估的混淆似乎是如何从饮食失调的文献中产生的。我们描述了早期关于“不灵活”人格特征的开创性观察、沟通能力研究以及损伤后额叶功能的研究是如何导致两种评估“认知灵活性”的方法的。我们讨论了自我报告和神经认知评估的混淆对该领域产生的影响，并为在研究和临床环境中评估认知灵活性提供了建议。
