Which term best describes the component of executive control involving the capacity to adjust behavior in response to changing rules or environment (cognitive flexibility)?

• A. Cognitive flexibility
• B. Inhibition
• C. Planning
• D. Working memory

Answer: (A)

Cognitive flexibility is the ability to adapt behavior when rules or the environment change, allowing you to switch strategies or mental sets in response to new information. This is exactly what the prompt describes: adjusting actions as rules or surroundings shift, rather than sticking to a previously learned approach. In tasks that probe this, you must recognize the change, abandon the former rule, and adopt a new one—an ability often tested by set-shifting tasks like the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test.

Inhibition, by contrast, is about suppressing automatic or dominant responses, not the broader capacity to switch rules. Planning focuses on arranging steps to reach a goal, and working memory concerns holding and manipulating information over short periods. While all are components of executive control, the scenario given best reflects cognitive flexibility because the core demand is adjusting behavior to new rules.