The key to success is not intelligence, but...

Intelligence is often considered a key driver of success, especially in fields such as science, innovation, and technology. Many of us have endless fantasies about the intelligence of famous people. However, in fact, superior intelligence is not the main reason behind some of the greatest achievements in human history. Many of these achievements rely primarily on qualities such as creativity, imagination, curiosity, and empathy.

Many of these qualities can be subsumed into what scientists call cognitive flexibility, the skill that allows us to shift between concepts and adjust our behavior in novel and changing circumstances to achieve our goals.

Essentially, it explores learning how to learn, and how to be flexible in learning in different ways, which includes changing strategies in order to make the best decision. In an ongoing study, a team of researchers at the University of Cambridge are trying to find out how best to improve people's cognitive flexibility.

Before we get into how to improve cognitive flexibility, let’s take a deeper look at why it’s important.

Cognitive flexibility provides us with the ability to see that what we are doing may not lead to the final success, thus driving us to make appropriate changes. For example, if you usually take the same route to work, but suddenly there is road construction on this route one day, what should you do? Some people will stubbornly stick to the original plan, even if they will be late in the end; while flexible people are better able to adapt to unexpected events and find solutions.

Cognitive flexibility can also affect how people cope with quarantine. Quarantine has brought us many new challenges, but some people can adapt to the daily routine of being quarantined at home better than others. People who can cope with quarantine flexibly may change their daily habits from time to time, trying to find better and more diverse ways to spend their days; while others struggle, they stick to the same daily activities with little flexibility or change, and eventually their thinking becomes more rigid.

Creativity is the ability to come up with new ideas, to create new connections between ideas, and to come up with new inventions. Flexible thinking is central to creativity. Not only that, it underpins academic work, as well as workplace skills such as problem solving. That said, it is largely independent of intelligence. For example, many visual artists may have average intelligence but are highly creative and have produced many outstanding works.

Contrary to what many people believe, creativity is also important in science and innovation. For example, researchers at the University of Cambridge found that entrepreneurs who had founded multiple companies had higher cognitive flexibility than managers of similar age and intelligence. So does greater cognitive flexibility make people smarter in a way that doesn't always show up on intelligence tests? What scientists do know is that it leads to better "cold cognition."

Cold cognition refers to non-emotional "rational" thinking. For example, it can help children have better reading skills and perform better in school; it can also help prevent some prejudices, because people with flexible cognitive abilities are better at recognizing their potential defects and will find ways to overcome them. Not only that, people's resilience in dealing with negative events in life and their quality of life in old age are also related to cognitive flexibility. It is also good for emotions and social cognition. Studies have shown that cognitive flexibility is strongly linked to the ability to understand other people's emotions, thoughts and intentions. The opposite of cognitive flexibility is cognitive rigidity, which exists in many mental health disorders, including obsessive-compulsive disorder, major depression and autism spectrum disorder (autism). Neuroimaging studies have shown that cognitive flexibility relies on a network of frontal and striatal regions of the brain. The frontal region is associated with high-level cognitive processes such as decision-making and problem solving; the striatal region is associated with rewards and motivation. Researchers have mastered many ways to objectively assess people's cognitive flexibility, such as the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test.
The good news is that cognitive flexibility seems to be something that can be trained, for example through cognitive behavioural therapy. CBT is an evidence-based psychotherapy that helps people change their thinking and behaviour patterns. For example, when a person with depression doesn’t contact their friends for a week, they are likely to attribute this to their friends not liking them anymore. The goal of cognitive behavioural therapy is to rewire their thinking to allow them to think more flexibly about other possibilities, such as that their friends are busy or have other reasons for not being able to contact them.

Another possible development direction is structural learning, which is the ability to extract structural information from complex environments and interpret sensory information streams that are initially incomprehensible. This type of learning is similar to cognitive flexibility, involving the frontal lobe and striatum areas of the brain. Currently, researchers at the University of Cambridge are collaborating with researchers at Nanyang Technological University on a "real-world" experiment to determine whether structural learning can actually improve cognitive flexibility.

Many studies have shown the benefits of training cognitive flexibility, which has also been observed in children with autism. After cognitive flexibility training, children with autism not only performed better on cognitive tasks, but also improved in social interaction and communication. In addition, cognitive flexibility training has also been shown to be beneficial for children without autism and the elderly.

Cognitive flexibility is essential for societies to thrive. It helps us maximize our individual potential, generate novel ideas and creative inventions. Ultimately, these qualities will be needed to solve the grand challenges we face today, such as global warming, protecting the natural world, sustainable energy, and food security.

Source: Principle

#Creative Team:

Written by:

Barbara Jacquelyn Sahakian (Professor of Clinical Psychology, University of Cambridge)

Christelle Langley (Researcher in Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Cambridge)

Victoria Leong (Affiliated Lecturer in Psychology, University of Cambridge)

Translation:

light rain

#Original source:

https://theconversation.com/iq-tests-cant-measure-it-but-cognitive-flexibility-is-key-to-learning-and-creativity-163284

#Image source:

Cover photo: Robert and Talbot Trudeau/Flickr, CC BY-NC