The association between cognitive flexibility and creativity across childhood and adolescence: a scoping review

Cognitive flexibility (CF), the ability to adaptively shift between perspectives, ideas, or strategies, is increasingly recognised as an important executive function underlying creativity. Creativity broadly refers to the capacity to generate ideas or solutions that are both unique and suitable to a given context. A positive association between CF and creativity is well-documented in adults. However, evidence from childhood and adolescence, which are developmental periods characterised by heightened neuroplasticity and the maturation of executive control, remains fragmented. This is largely due to substantial methodological heterogeneity across studies. This scoping review synthesises empirical studies published in the past decade that examine the association between CF and creativity in individuals aged 0-18 years. Specifically, it examines: (1) how CF and creativity have been conceptualised and measured in this age group; (2) whether there is an association between CF and creativity; and (3) whether this association varies across preschoolers, school-going children, and adolescents. Fourteen studies met the inclusion criteria for the scoping review. Definitions and measurement approaches varied widely, spanning performance-based tasks and self‑report instruments. Nine of the studies found a significant positive association between CF and creativity, particularly when CF was assessed as a complex, multifaceted construct and when creativity was assessed by traditional tools. In contrast, five studies reported null or inconsistent findings; these studies often employed narrow task-switching paradigms or creativity tasks incorporating other cognitive demands (e.g., reasoning). Importantly, no consistent age‑related differences were identified in the CF-creativity association. The results combined suggest that creativity may rely more on higher-level, strategic forms of CF that support the integration and exploration of ideas, rather than on simple rule-switching ability. By consolidating existing evidence and highlighting key conceptual and methodological gaps, this review offers a clear direction for future research to take when investigating the association between CF and creativity across developmental stages.