Measures and References: References: Cognitive Flexibility

Return to References: Cognitive Flexibility factor page.

Measures

Numerous measures exist to gain a full picture of a student's learning strengths and challenges. Following are examples of measures used to assess this Learner Factor. These measures should be administered and interpreted by experienced professionals.

Dimensional Change Card Sort task: (Zelazo, 2006): Assesses Cognitive Flexibility. Children are taught to sort picture cards into two categories according to one dimension or rule (e.g., color), and then are asked to switch to using a different rule (e.g., shape).

Wisconsin Card Sorting Task: (Miles et al., 2021): Children sort picture cards according to three dimensions or rules: color, shape, and number.

Trail Making Test (part B): (Bowie & Harvey, 2006): Measures Cognitive Flexibility by requiring students to connect/draw a line between labeled points on a sheet of paper according to a rule of alternating between numbers and letter (e.g. 1-> A->2->B->3->C…)

References

Alarcón-Rubio, D., Sánchez-Medina, J. A., & Prieto-García, J. R. (2014). Executive function and verbal self-regulation in childhood: Developmental linkages between partially internalized private speech and cognitive flexibility. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 29(2), 95-105.

Arán Filippetti, V., & Krumm, G. (2020). A hierarchical model of cognitive flexibility in children: Extending the relationship between flexibility, creativity and academic achievement. Child Neuropsychology, 26(6), 770-800.

Armitage, K. L., Suddendorf, T., Bulley, A., Bastos, A. P., Taylor, A. H., & Redshaw, J. (2023). Creativity and flexibility in young children's use of external cognitive strategies. Developmental Psychology.

Bacso, S. A., & Nilsen, E. S. (2017). What's that you're saying? Children with better executive functioning produce and repair communication more effectively. Journal of Cognition and Development, 18(4), 441-464.

Baddeley, A. (1996). Exploring the central executive. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A, 49(1), 5-28.

Bauer, P. J., & Zelazo, P., D. (2014). The National Institutes of Health Toolbox for the Assessment of Neurological and Behavioral Function: A Tool for Developmental Science. Child Development Perspectives, 8, 119–24.

Best, J. R., Miller, P. H., & Naglieri, J. A. (2011). Relations between executive function and academic achievement from ages 5 to 17 in a large, representative national sample. Learning and Individual Differences, 21(4), 327–336.

Bialystok, E., & Viswanathan, M. (2009). Components of executive control with advantages for bilingual children in two cultures. Cognition, 112(3), 494-500.

Bialystok, E. (2011). Global-Local and Trail-Making Tasks by monolingual and bilingual children: Beyond Inhibition. Developmental Psychology, 46(1), 93–105.

Blair, C., & Razza, R. P. (2007). Relating effortful control, executive function, and false belief understanding to emerging math and literacy ability in kindergarten. Child Development, 78(2), 647-663.

Bock, A. M., Gallaway, K. C., & Hund, A. M. (2015). Specifying links between executive functioning and theory of mind during middle childhood: Cognitive flexibility predicts social understanding. Journal of Cognition and Development, 16(3), 509–521.

Bonino, S., & Cattelino, E. (1999). The relationship between cognitive abilities and social abilities in childhood: A research on flexibility in thinking and co-operation with peers. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 23(1), 19-36.

Bowie, C., Harvey, P. D. (2006). Administration and interpretation of Trail Making Test. Nature Protocols, 1(5), 2277–2281.

Buttelmann, F., & Karbach, J. (2017). Development and plasticity of cognitive flexibility in early and middle childhood. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 1040.

Cepeda, N. J., Cepeda, M. L., & Kramer, A. F. (2000). Task switching and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 28(3), 213–226.

Chen, Y., Wang, Y., Wang, S., Zhang, M., & Wu, N. (2021). Self-reported sleep and executive function in early primary school children. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 793000.

Chevalier, N., Sheffield, T. D., Nelson, J. M., Clark, C. A., Wiebe, S. A., & Espy, K. A. (2012). Underpinnings of the costs of flexibility in preschool children: The roles of inhibition and working memory. Developmental neuropsychology, 37(2), 99-118.

Ciairano, S., Bonino, S., & Miceli, R. (2006). Cognitive flexibility and social competence from childhood to early adolescence. Cognitie, Creier, Comportament/Cognition, Brain, Behavior, 10(3).

Clark, D., Schumann, F., & Mostofsky, S. H. (2015). Mindful movement and skilled attention. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9, 297.

Darby, K. P., Castro, L., Wasserman, E. A., & Sloutsky, V. M. (2018). Cognitive flexibility and memory in pigeons, human children, and adults. Cognition, 177, 30-40.

Davis, S., Rawlings, B., Clegg, J. M., Ikejimba, D., Watson-Jones, R. E., Whiten, A., & Legare, C. H. (2022). Cognitive flexibility supports the development of cumulative cultural learning in children. Scientific Reports, 12(1), 14073.

de Santana, A. N., Roazzi, A., & Nobre, A. P. M. C. (2022). The relationship between cognitive flexibility and mathematical performance in children: A meta-analysis. Trends in Neuroscience and Education, 28, 100179.

Doebel, S., & Zelazo, P. D. (2015). A meta-analysis of the Dimensional Change Card Sort: Implications for developmental theories and the measurement of executive function in children. Developmental Review, 38, 241-268.

Dogru, Y. (2021). The development of cognitive flexibility in early childhood (Doctoral dissertation, University of Sheffield).

Gillis, R., & Nilsen, E. S. (2014). Cognitive flexibility supports preschoolers' detection of communicative ambiguity. First Language, 34(1), 58-71.

Gopnik, A., O'Grady, S., Lucas, C. G., Griffiths, T. L., Wente, A., Bridgers, S., ... & Dahl, R. E. (2017). Changes in cognitive flexibility and hypothesis search across human life history from childhood to adolescence to adulthood. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(30), 7892-7899.

Gopnik, A., O'Grady, S., Lucas, C. G., Griffiths, T. L., Wente, A., Bridgers, S., & Dahl, R. E. (2017). Changes in cognitive flexibility and hypothesis search across human life history from childhood to adolescence to adulthood. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(30), 7892-7899.

Honoré, N., Houssa, M., Volckaert, A., Noël, M. P., & Nader-Grosbois, N. (2020). Training inhibition and social cognition in the classrooms. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 1974.

Kloo, D., and Perner, J. (2003). Training transfer between card sorting and false belief understanding: helping children apply conflicting descriptions. Child Dev. 74, 1823–1839.

Kloo, D., Perner, J., Aichhorn, M., & Schmidhuber, N. (2010). Perspective taking and cognitive flexibility in the Dimensional Change Card Sorting (DCCS) task. Cognitive Development, 25(3), 208-217.

Legare, C. H., Dale, M. T., Kim, S. Y., & Deak, G. O. (2018). Cultural variation in cognitive flexibility reveals diversity in the development of executive functions. Scientific Reports, 8, 16326.

Li, J., Wang, W., Cheng, J., Li, H., Feng, L., Ren, Y., ... & Wang, Y. (2022). Relationships between sensory integration and the core symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: the mediating effect of executive function. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 1-12.

Li, P., Jin, X., Liao, Y., Li, Y., Shen, M., & He, J. (2019). Cooperation turns preschoolers into flexible perspective takers. Cognitive Development, 52, 100823.

Ludyga, S., Gerber, M., Mücke, M., Brand, S., Weber, P., Brotzmann, M., & Pühse, U. (2020). The acute effects of aerobic exercise on cognitive flexibility and task-related heart rate variability in children with ADHD and healthy controls. Journal of Attention Disorders, 24(5), 693-703.

Magalhães, S., Carneiro, L., Limpo, T., & Filipe, M. (2020). Executive functions predict literacy and mathematics achievements: The unique contribution of cognitive flexibility in grades 2, 4, and 6. Child Neuropsychology, 26(7), 934-952.

Malinowski, P. (2013). Neural mechanisms of attentional control in mindfulness meditation. Frontiers in Neuroscience,7, 1–11.

Marcovitch, S., O'Brien, M., Calkins, S. D., Leerkes, E. M., Weaver, J. M., & Levine, D. W. (2015). A longitudinal assessment of the relation between executive function and theory of mind at 3, 4, and 5 years. Cognitive Development, 33, 40-55.

McClelland, M. M., Cameron, C. E., Duncan, R., Bowles, R. P., Acock, A. C., Miao, A., & Pratt, M. E. (2014). Predictors of early growth in academic achievement: The head-toes-knees-shoulders task. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 599.

Medeiros, W., Torro-Alves, N., Malloy-Diniz, L. F., & Minervino, C. M. (2016). Executive functions in children who experience bullying situations. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1197.

Miles, S., Howlett, C. A., Berryman, C., Nedeljkovic, M., Moseley, G. L., & Phillipou, A. (2021). Considerations for using the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test to assess cognitive flexibility. Behavior Research Methods, 53(5), 2083-2091.

Moffett, L., Weissman, A., McCormick, M., Weiland, C., Hsueh, J., Snow, C., & Sachs, J. (2022). Enrollment in Pre-K and children's social-emotional and executive functioning skills: To what extent are associations sustained across time? Journal of Educational Psychology, 115(3), 460-474.

Nouwens, S., Groen, M. A., & Verhoeven, L. (2016). How storage and executive functions contribute to children's reading comprehension. Learning and Individual Differences, 47, 96-102.

Quiñones-Camacho, L. E., Fishburn, F. A., Camacho, M. C., Wakschlag, L. S., & Perlman, S. B. (2019). Cognitive flexibility-related prefrontal activation in preschoolers: A biological approach to temperamental effortful control. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 38, 100651.

Randazzo, A. C., Muehlbach, M. J., Schweitzer, P. K., & Walsh, J. K. (1998). Cognitive function following acute sleep restriction in children ages 10-14. Sleep, 21(8), 861-868.

Rauch, W. A., Gold, A., & Schmitt, K. (2012). To what extent are task-switching deficits in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder independent of impaired inhibition? ADHD Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorders, 4(4), 179–187.

Raver, C. C., & Balir, C. (2016). Neuroscientific insights: Attention, working memory, and inhibitory control. The Future of Children, 26(2), 95-118.

Rucinski, C. L. (2019). Variation in Exposure to Early Elementary Classroom Racial/Ethnic Diversity and Child Development in a Nationally Representative Sample (Doctoral dissertation, Fordham University).

Sarsour, K., Sheridan, M., Jutte, D., Nuru-Jeter, A., Hinshaw, S., & Boyce, W. T. (2011). Family socioeconomic status and child executive functions: The roles of language, home environment, and single parenthood. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 17(1), 120-132.

Shaw, P., Eckstrand, K., Sharp, W., Blumenthal, J., Lerch, J. P., Greenstein, D. E. E. A., ... & Rapoport, J. L. (2007). Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder is characterized by a delay in cortical maturation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(49), 19649-19654.v

Spann, M. N., Mayes, L. C., & Kalmar, J. H. (2012). Childhood abuse and neglect and cognitive flexibility in adolescents. Child Neuropsychology, 18(2), 182–189.

Spann, M. N., Mayes, L. C., Kalmar, J. H., Guiney, J., Womer, F. Y., Pittman, B., ... & Blumberg, H. P. (2012). Childhood abuse and neglect and cognitive flexibility in adolescents. Child Neuropsychology, 18(2), 182-189.

Suntheimer, N. M., & Wolf, S. (2020). Cumulative risk, teacher-child closeness, executive function and early academic skills in kindergarten children. Journal of School Psychology, 78, 23-37.

Van der Niet, A. G., Hartman, E., Smith, J., & Visscher, C. (2014). Modeling relationships between physical fitness, executive functioning, and academic achievement in primary school children. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 15(4), 319-325.

Vitiello, V. E., Greenfield, D. B., & Munis, P. (2016). Cognitive flexibility, approaches to learning, and academic school readiness in Head Start preschool children. Self-Regulation and Early School Success, 34-56.

Wang, X., Liu, X., & Feng, T. (2021). The continuous impact of cognitive flexibility on the development of emotion understanding in children aged 4 and 5 years: A longitudinal study. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 203, 105018.

Yeniad, N., Malda, M., Mesman, J., Van Ijzendoorn, M. H., & Pieper, S. (2013). Shifting ability predicts math and reading performance in children: A meta-analytical study. Learning and Individual Differences, 23(1), 1–9.

Zelazo, P. D. (2006). The Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS): A method of assessing executive function in children. Nature Protocols, 1(1), 297-301.

Zeytinoglu, S., Calkins, S. D., & Leerkes, E. M. (2019). Maternal emotional support but not cognitive support during problem-solving predicts increases in cognitive flexibility in early childhood. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 43(1), 12-23.