Cognitive Flexibility, a component of executive functioning, is the ability to think about multiple concepts, either at the same time or switching between them. Cognitive Flexibility can, for example, help readers make inferences by incorporating new information as they are reading with their Background Knowledge or help writers proofread a passage by allowing them to attend to multiple aspects of writing, such as structure and spelling, at once. Cognitive Flexibility develops through childhood and has been shown to support both reading comprehension and writing proficiency.

Cognitive Flexibility can also be called attention shifting or task switching, which involves adaptively shifting away from one idea or component of a task and responding or attending to something new. We use Cognitive Flexibility to effectively adapt our behavior as we face changing environment and task demands. In school, students must consider and switch between different rules and strategies to complete learning tasks.

Cognitive Flexibility can allow students to flexibly use different reading strategies, such as re-reading or skimming, based on the goals of the task. It can also support the writing process, for example, to help students find and use a different word to describe something.