in a flexible way. This involves slowing down the routine of drawing a man, which usually always starts with the head, by requiring the child to start the drawing with one of the man’s feet.
Table 1.1 summarizes the examples of direct measurement flexibility tests presented in this chapter. The target population (children or adults) is specified, as well as the ages, if necessary, and the presence of a norm is indicated in brackets when available. The last column shows the type of measurement proposed: first, if it is a question of reactive flexibility, that is, in response to an instruction or cue, or a change in the characteristics of the stimuli, or spontaneous flexibility, the situation proposed induces a certain amount of flexibility, but the changes are initiated by the individual themselves. Then, it details if the change is requested at each trial (item by item) or by series of items (by block), or if the procedure corresponds to task switching.
Table 1.1. Examples of flexibility tasks in direct measurement
| Authors | Population | Type of measurement | |
| Trail Making Test | Reitan and Wolfson (1993) | Adults | Reactive Item by item |
| Trail Making Test for preschoolers | Espy and Cwik (2004) | Preschoolers | Reactive Item by item |
| Color Trail Test | D’Elia et al. (1996) | Adults | Reactive Item by item |
| Children’s Color Trail Test | Williams et al. (1995) | Children aged 8 to 16 years old | Reactive Item by item |
| Plus minus | Jersild (1927) | Adults | Reactive Task switching |
| Wisconsin Card Sorting Test | Grant and Berg (1948) | Adults | Reactive Per block |
| Brixton Spatial Anticipation Test | Burgess and Shallice (1996) | Adults | Reactive Per block |
| Brixton Preschool | Lehto and Uusitalo (2006) | Preschoolers | Reactive Per block |
| Dimensional Change Card Sort | Doebel and Zelazo (2015) | Preschoolers | Reactive Per block |
| Local Global Task | Miyake et al. (2000) | Adults | Reactive Task switching |
| Number-letter task | Rogers and Monsell (1995) | Adults | Reactive Task switching |
| The color-shape task | Miyake and Friedman (2012) | Adults | Reactive Task switching |
| Verbal fluency | Delis et al. (2001) | 8–89 years old (norm) | Spontaneous |
| The Creature Counting | Manly et al. (2001) | Children aged 6 to 12 years old (norm) | Reactive Per block |
| Fluidity of drawings | Korkman et al. (2012) | Children aged 5 to 16 years and 11 months (norm) | Spontaneous |
| Categorization | Korkman et al. (2012) | Children aged 7 to 16 years and 11 months (norm) | Spontaneous |
| Innovation paradigm | Karmiloff-Smith (1990) | Children | Spontaneous |
| Drawing of a man starting with the foot | Baldy (2010) | Children | Spontaneous |
1.3.1.2. Indirect assessments
Several questionnaires allow for the indirect assessment of cognitive flexibility. One of the first to be proposed was the Cognitive Flexibility Scale (Martin and Ruben 1995). This scale consists of 12 items, to which the participant responds using a five-point Likert scale. Example of an item: “I am willing to work on problems that require a creative solution”.
The next three correspond to three versions of the Behavioral Assessment of Executive Functions Inventory, depending on the population. These three scales were constructed on an ecological basis and propose to evaluate the consequences of executive deficits in daily life, by adapting the situations to the three age groups targeted (preschoolers, children/adolescents, adults).
The BRIEF-A (Behavioral Assessment of Executive Function Inventory; Roth et al. (2005)), adult version, can be used to assess all executive functions, including flexibility. This questionnaire can be used in self or hetero-assessment.
It is composed of 75 questions grouped into nine scales: inhibition, flexibility, emotional control, self-control, initiation, working memory, planning/organization, task control and material organization. This tool was designed from an ecological perspective and allows the identification of executive deficits in adults (aged 18–93 years old) through their consequences in daily life.
Two other versions have been proposed, one for children and another for adolescents: the BRIEF (Behavioral Assessment of Executive Functions Inventory), child and adolescent version calibrated from 5 to 18 years of age (Gioia et al. 2000); the other for preschoolers: the BRIEF-P (Gioia et al. 2003). These two versions are proposed in hetero-assessment.
The
