How can we change the way we think?

Cognitive flexibility is clearly an important aspect of cognitive control, possibly its most representative aspect: For example, cognitive flexibility is necessary for switching between different tasks, rules, or perspectives (e.g., ways of thinking about an object or a situation). Cognitive flexibility also allows us to not only act on the basis of the most salient aspects of a situation and to alter behavior in response to relevant changes in the environment. Evidently, flexibility in thinking, therefore, is a major competency for our everyday lives: It allows us to think of alternatives, to adapt to changes in our environment, to flexibly allocate mental resources, and to reconfigure our cognitive system. The core question of the proposed project is: "How can we flexibly control our cognition?" or, more specifically, "How do we change the way we think?" The project aims at investigating cognitive flexibility from a broad and yet focused perspective. It will be focused, because versions of one particular task (the Dimensional Change Card Sorting task) will be used in all parts of the project as an indicator of cognitive flexibility in children as well as in adults. But the project will also take a broad perspective, because cognitive flexibility will be investigated in normal development from childhood to adulthood, in one developmental disorder often associated with deficits in cognitive flexibility (autism spectrum disorder), in relation to brain functioning (using functional magnetic resonance imaging), basic attentional processes (specifically re-orientation of attention), and theory of mind. Furthermore, with a view to possible applications of this research, a training procedure intended to enhance cognitive flexibility will also be investigated.

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) typically have difficulties with social communication and interaction. Also, stereotypical and repetitive behaviors are common. A number of researchers found a deficit in cognitive flexibility in persons with ASD. However, this does not mean that children with ASD are generally inflexible; instead, this project shows that they have problems with one specific kind of cognitive flexibility, namely with the ability to think differently about one object or a situation. This ability develops in the preschool years. At about 4 years of age, typically developing children become able to categorize one and the same object (e.g., a red apple) first as "an apple" and then as a "red thing". A number of studies showed that this specific kind of flexibility is related to social perspective-taking, which, in turn, is impaired in persons with autism: they have difficulty seeing the world through they eyes of another person. These perspective-taking problems in children with autism spectrum disorder also were evident in the current project. Furthermore, we were able to show that children with autism spectrum disorder have problems with a specific kind of cognitive flexibility, but they are not completely inflexible. They were well able to switch between sorting by color vs. shape if the two dimensions were not integrated within one object (e.g., if they were required to sort colorless outlines of an apple and red circles). Also, they effortlessly placed an apple to an apple in the "normal fruit game" and then, placed the apple to the pear in the "silly fruit game". However, as typically developing 3-year-old children, they seem to lack a highly specific kind of flexibility: They have difficulty categorizing a red apple first as "an apple" and then as a "red thing". This indicates that this specific kind of flexibility, the ability to switch between different perspectives, plays a major role in typical development as well as in ASD. Therefore, training interventions in children with ASD should (also) focus on this specific kind of flexibility. The more so as training this kind of flexibility has been shown to improve social cognition in typically developing 3-year-olds.