Successful Solution Discovery and Cognitive Flexibility

Cognitive Flexibility Or Flexibilities? Insights From A Classroom Study.

“…It should be noted, however, that these conclusions stem from generalizations drawn from observations gathered using a narrow range of cognitive flexibility tasks. Indeed, many behaviors are deemed flexible (including adapting responses to a rule change, problem-solving, generating new ideas, word learning, Deák, 2003;Clément, 2009;Ionescu, 2012), but as noted by Clément (2022), rule-shifting and switching paradigms were designed with the aim to train and assess a general ability, not the full extent of what cognitive flexibility actually is. Implicitly, these tasks operate under the assumption that cognitive flexibility is a domaingeneral process relying on set shifting (the shift of attention between two tasks).…”

“…It requires divergent thought. Reactive flexibility is mostly assessed with the switching and rule-shifting tasks described above, while spontaneous flexibility is typically grasped with divergent thinking and verbal fluency paradigms (Clément, 2009(Clément, , 2022Eslinger & Grattan, 1993). Divergent thinking tasks require imagining a variety of new uses for an object commonly used for a specific purpose (e.g., a brick, a pencil, a hanger, Gilhooly et al, 2007).…”

“…Cognitive flexibility has been shown to support the development of several skills from a young age, such as creative thinking (e.g., Arán Filippetti & Krumm, 2020;Ebersbach & Hagedorn, 2011;Pan & Yu, 2018;Runco, 2004), lexical and conceptual knowledge (e.g., Blaye & Bonthoux, 2001;Blaye & Maintenant, 2008;Deák, 2003;Duvignau et al, 2007), problem solving (Clément, 2009(Clément, , 2022Gros, Thibaut, & Sander, 2020;Raynal, 2022;Zelazo & Frye, 1998), as well as many aspects of school achievement such as mathematics, reading, and literacy (e.g., Arán Filippetti & Richaud, 2017;Bull & Scerif, 2001;Gros & Gvozdic, 2022;Iacono, Gros, & Clément, 2022;Titz & Karbach, 2014;Yeniad et al, 2013). For instance, it has been suggested that cognitive flexibility development contributes to reading fluency in early readers by helping them to switch between phonological and semantic word properties (Cartwright et al, 2019).…”

Creativity and Innovation in Civic Spaces Supported by Cognitive Flexibility When Learning with AI Chatbots in Smart Cities

“…Geirbo, Harboe, Hoelscher, and Petersen (2022) [3] explore urban design in relation to the elements of flexibility and inclusion, where the notion of "interpretive flexibility" is advanced as "an approach to designing inclusive urban space". Clément (2022) [4] claims that "a broad consensus is emerging on the flexible nature of human cognition to adapt to novelty and unexpected events". As such, cognitive flexibility is said to be key to learning, as in, enabling "us to adapt to a constantly changing environment" in order "to discover solutions in new and/or unexpected situations, and to transfer knowledge learned in one context to a new context" (Clément, 2022) [4], among other examples.…”

“…Clément (2022) [4] claims that "a broad consensus is emerging on the flexible nature of human cognition to adapt to novelty and unexpected events". As such, cognitive flexibility is said to be key to learning, as in, enabling "us to adapt to a constantly changing environment" in order "to discover solutions in new and/or unexpected situations, and to transfer knowledge learned in one context to a new context" (Clément, 2022) [4], among other examples. The notion of a "learning city" has been identified as a fundamental component of the smart city in relation to human factors and support for learning and education (Nam and Pardo, 2011) [5].…”