TY  - JOUR
A1  - Buttelmann, Frances
A1  - Karbach, Julia
T1  - Development and plasticity of cognitive flexibility in early and middle childhood
T2  - Frontiers in psychology
N2  - Cognitive flexibility, the ability to flexibly switch between tasks, is a core dimension of executive functions (EFs) allowing to control actions and to adapt flexibly to changing environments. It supports the management of multiple tasks, the development of novel, adaptive behavior and is associated with various life outcomes. Cognitive flexibility develops rapidly in preschool and continuously increases well into adolescence, mirroring the growth of neural networks involving the prefrontal cortex. Over the past decade, there has been increasing interest in interventions designed to improve cognitive flexibility in children in order to support the many developmental outcomes associated with cognitive flexibility. This article provides a brief review of the development and plasticity of cognitive flexibility across early and middle childhood (i.e., from preschool to elementary school age). Focusing on interventions designed to improve cognitive flexibility in typically developing children, we report evidence for significant training and transfer effects while acknowledging that current findings on transfer are heterogeneous. Finally, we introduce metacognitive training as a promising new approach to promote cognitive flexibility and to support transfer of training.
KW  - cognitive flexibility
KW  - intervention
KW  - childhood
KW  - executive functions
KW  - metacognition
KW  - DCCS
KW  - task switching
Y1  - 2017
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/44364
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-443643
SN  - 1664-1078
N1  - Copyright © 2017 Buttelmann and Karbach. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
VL  - 8
IS  - Art. 1040
SP  - 1
EP  - 6
PB  - Frontiers Research Foundation
CY  - Lausanne
ER  -