To be or not to be flexible: A hierarchical model of affective flexibility in typical development and internalizing problems.

Affective flexibility is defined as a complex executive function which enables individuals to successfully alternate between distinct emotional and non-emotional features of a given situation in order to attain a specific goal. A large body of research has focused exclusively on flexibility in a non-emotional context, although most of our interactions with our environment are emotionally satiated. Our main aim was to propose a hierarchical framework to describe this construct from a macro-level perspective to a more nuanced and micro-level perspective, including three different levels of affective flexibility: elementary, shifting, and generative. Next, we employed this hierarchical framework to examine the role played by affective flexibility in typical development and different forms of developmental psychopathology. Lastly, we discuss how this knowledge could inform future prevention and intervention programs aimed at reducing cognitive vulnerability to developmental psychopathology.

Anxiety-linked impairment in the ability to recode stimuli.

It has been proposed that elevated trait anxiety is associated with deficits in cognitive flexibility, which is required to enable people to switch between different ways of classifying information. Recent research has focused on a particular facet of cognitive flexibility that may be specifically impaired in high trait anxious individuals. This concerns the ability to recode stimulus information that has initially been categorized in terms of 1 stimulus dimension, in terms of an alternative dimension. However, limitations in previously employed assessment methodologies compromise the capacity to draw firm conclusions from prior research investigating this hypothesis. Across 2 studies we developed and delivered a novel stimulus information recoding assessment task to a sample of individuals who varied in trait anxiety, to test the hypothesis that elevated trait anxiety is specifically associated with a deficit in the ability to recode information that has already been classified. Across both studies we found evidence to support this hypothesis. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).