2026-06-10 –, AUDITORIUM
Cognitive flexibility is widely studied across psychological literature. Yet, it is operationalized in markedly different ways. Neurobehavioral research typically indexes flexibility via performance-based measures of set-shifting or task-switching, whereas cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and related clinical traditions conceptualize flexibility in terms of belief updating, reappraisal, or psychological adaptability, often assessed through self-report measures. Drawing on insights from a scoping review of cognitive flexibility in schizophrenia, this lightning talk highlights how the shared label obscures theoretical and measurement heterogeneity, while empirical links between these operationalizations are rarely examined. I argue that this lack of systematic disambiguation limits overall inference, complicates evidence synthesis, and risks inappropriate generalizations across studies. I propose a few recommendations: explicit construct tagging at first use, operationalization-first reporting, restricting cross-tradition generalization, justifying joint measurement when integration is claimed, and separating evidence syntheses by operationalization, rather than aggregating under a shared label.
