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Updated: Jul 12, 2025

The Attentional Set Shifting Task: A Measure of Cognitive Flexibility in Mice
Published on: February 4, 2015
Learning where to be flexible: Using environmental cues to regulate cognitive control
Shengjie Xu1, Jonas Simoens1, Tom Verguts1
1Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University.
Abstract:
Cognitive flexibility refers to a mental state that allows efficient switching between tasks. While deciding to be flexible is often ascribed to a strategic resource-intensive executive process, people may also simply use their environment to trigger different states of cognitive flexibility. We developed a paradigm where participants were exposed to two environments with different task-switching probabilities, followed by a probe phase to test the impact of environmental cues. Our results show that people were more efficient at switching in a high-switch environment. Critically, we observe environment-specific triggering of cognitive flexibility after a 4-day training period (Experiment 2, N = 51), but not after a 1-day training period (Experiment 1, N = 52). Together, these findings suggest that people can associate the need for cognitive flexibility with their environment, providing an environmental triggering mechanism for cognitive control. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
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