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Flexibility and stability can be both dependent and independent

Nature Reviews Psychology volume 3, page 636 (2024)Cite this article

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The cognitive flexibility–stability trade-off posits that as cognitive flexibility increases, cognitive stability decreases: trying to switch more efficiently between different tasks might come at the cost of a decreased task focus and susceptibility to interference1,2,3,4,5. Egner (Egner, T. Principles of cognitive control over task focus and task switching. Nat. Rev. Psychol. 2, 702–714 (2023))6 challenges the view that cognitive flexibility and stability constitute opposing extremes of a one-dimensional spectrum and argues instead that cognitive flexibility and stability are supported by two independent mechanisms (see refs. 7,8 for other arguments and examinations of empirical evidence). This argument foregrounds the question of whether the seemingly uniform mechanisms for cognitive flexibility and stability are dependent or independent. We are concerned that, despite its best intentions, this question could lead to an ill-advised theoretical debate and research agenda. Instead, a proper understanding of the flexibility–stability trade-off would benefit from characterizing the multidimensional mechanisms that underlie cognitive flexibility versus stability at different levels of information processing.

We appreciate Egner’s perspective that the assumption of a flexibility–stability trade-off can be difficult to falsify, given that the terms ‘flexibility’ and ‘stability’ are rather broad and their definitions vague9. Flexibility and stability can be operationalized in different ways across different tasks and paradigms2. For example, flexibility as measured in terms of task-switching performance might not underlie the same processes as flexibility in the face of response interference. These examples can be redescribed as separate flexibility–stability problems in different contexts or different moments in time. Indeed, formal modelling work suggests that a trade-off between flexibility and stability exists at different levels of information processing — ranging from perceptual processing to task goal reconfiguration to social decision-making10 — and offers a process-specific and mechanistically explicit understanding at the level of neural representations5,11.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany

    Gesine Dreisbach

  2. Institute of Cognitive Science, Osnabrück University, Osnabrück, Germany

    Sebastian Musslick

  3. Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

    Sebastian Musslick

  4. Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Senne Braem

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  1. Gesine Dreisbach
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  2. Sebastian Musslick
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  3. Senne Braem
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Correspondence to Gesine Dreisbach.

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Dreisbach, G., Musslick, S. & Braem, S. Flexibility and stability can be both dependent and independent. Nat Rev Psychol 3, 636 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-024-00348-3

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