Cognitive rigidity and flexibility: a neuropsychological study
Date
1981
Authors
Regard, Marianne
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Abstract
This study investigated the effects of imagery on flexibility and the relations among verbal and non-verbal and spontaneous and adaptive flexibility measures. Finally, the effects if brain damage on flexibility and imagery were investigated. Historical and more recent concepts of the cognitive rigidity-flexibility dimension were discussed with special emphasis on the effects of brain damage.
Forty female and fourteen male volunteer students were tested with verbal and non-verbal flexibility tests. Measures of spontaneous flexibility were the Word Fluency Test and the Five Point Test and measures of adaptive flexibility were the Stroop Test and a newly introduced concept identification test, assessing imagery and interference concepts. Furthermore, a questionnaire to assess individual imagery styles was employed as well as the vocabulary and block design subtests of the WAIS.
The results of brain damaged subjects were compared to a matched control group. Furthermore, z-score profiles were prepared to compare the test patterns between the different patient groups.
Four dimensions of cognitive flexibility-rigidity were found in healthy subjects. Furthermore it was found that individual imagery styles had little influence on the performance in flexibility tests. A trend was showing that "habitual verbalizers" had no advantage in solving the tests and ad in fac more difficulty with the identification of non-verbal concepts. No significant gender effects were found. Brain damaged patients performed significantly poorer in all flexibility tests than normal subjects.
Several test- and subject variables that effect the performance on flexibility tests were discussed. It was concluded that rigidity-flexibility measures represent different dimensions depending on stimulus mode and type of task. It was further concluded that behavioral rigidity-flexibility is not only the function of test variables, but also of various subject variables namely imagery style, intelligence, age, gender and brain damage. In healthy people, the performance on one test was not found to be predictive for the performance on another flexibility test. On the other hand, in brain damaged subjects rigid behavior seems to extend to a wider range of test performance. Finally, different performance patterns were described for different lesion sites in brain damaged.