RESEARCH PROJECTS.

Cognitive flexibility is defined as the ability to shift response toward a stimulus, regardless of whether the stimulus changes. Emotional flexibility is the ability to respond in a context-dependent way toward changes in emotional circumstances.  During an emotional input, precise emotional outcomes can be achieved through the usage of appraisal and cognitive processes, including cognitive flexibility. All of these abilities together are an essential part of life in even the most simple-seeming events.  For example, when someone gets lost in a new city, they are able to emotionally and cognitively shift their reaction toward the new event of being lost.  The Emotional Shifting Task (EST), developed in this lab by Renáta Cserjési and Brigitte Biró, is a novel ecologically-designed paradigm that implicitly measures emotional flexibility.  This tool is used to discuss the relation between cognitive and emotional flexibility, a relation which is rarely addressed in the literature.

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"The creation and validation of the Emotional Shifting Task (EST) was my main focus. This novel task aims to be an implicit and ecologically valid measurement for emotional flexibility. In this project I investigate emotional flexibility in the context of cognitive flexibility, mood, and psychological distress." (Brigitte Biró, PhD Student, Research Assistant)