A FISTful of Emotion: Individual Differences in Trait XXXX and Cognitive-Affective Flexibility During Preadolescence.

@entity1 @entity148 @entity146
UNASSIGNED: Cognitive-affective flexibility represents the ability to switch between alternative ways of processing emotional stimuli according to situational demands and individual goals. Although @entity146 has been implicated as a mechanism for the development of @entity148 , there is very limited data on this relationship in @entity1 and adolescents. The aim of the current study was to investigate cognitive-affective flexibility in preadolescents (N  =  112, 50 @entity1 , 11-12 and 13-14  years old) and to examine if this ability is related to individual differences in trait @entity148 . Their interplay was assessed using the modified version of the Flexible Item Selection Task (FIST; Jacques and Zelazo 2001) with non-emotional stimuli (geometrical shapes) and the Emotional FIST (EM-FIST) with emotional stimuli (emotional facial expressions). Performance on the EM-FIST indicated that across the whole age range, trials requiring greater cognitive flexibility were more demanding than nonflexible ones, as revealed by both response time and accuracy performance. Moreover, flexibility demands were higher for younger @entity1 than for older ones but only in terms of response speed. Individual differences in trait @entity148 moderated the impact of flexibility only on the EM-FIST. Being flexible on the EM-FIST was more demanding for high trait anxious @entity1 than for their low trait anxious peers. Lastly, overall @entity1 responded faster than @entity1 , but only in the EM-FIST. These findings extend the presently limited literature concerning variability in cognitive-affective flexibility during this sensitive developmental window.
