Flex Your Mind! The Relationship Between Cognitive Flexibility and Academic Achievement in College Students With or Without ADHD

Indianapolis, IN

Cognitive flexibility (CF) is the ability to switch thoughts between two different concepts, to think about multiple concepts simultaneously or to select among multiple representations of an object, strategy or task given specific or changing situations. CF has been shown to be a vital component of learning and to correlate with many integral outcome measures. Our study explored the relationship between CF and academic skills in 27 college students with (n=10) and without (n=17) Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) who completed the Conner's Adult ADHD Rating Scale, two tests of CF—the Cognitive Flexibility Rating Scale and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test—and the twelve standard subtests of the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement. We hypothesized that college students with ADHD would be less cognitively flexible than their non-ADHD peers and that CF would positively correlate with academic achievement, with the strength of this relationship varying across specific academic areas. Overall, our results supported our hypotheses. Although we failed to find group differences in self-reported or objective CF, we successfully documented a significant relationship between ADHD symptomatology and CF regardless of diagnosis. Additionally, CF predicted many areas of academic achievement in our students such as reading, oral comprehension, and mathematical abilities, but not writing skills. Together these findings suggest that CF may influence college students' academic success and may be an important factor to consider for students both with and without ADHD.