Cognitive flexibility is the ability to adapt the cognitive processing strategies to face new and unexpected conditions in the environment and may be related with psychopathologies as depressive symptoms. We aimed to determine the effect of cognitive flexibility on the depressive symptoms and hopelessness. We recruited 200 volunteer between 18-65 age who gave online informed consent by using exponential non-discriminate snowball sampling initially through internet to the study. Online forms of sociodemographic data form, Beck Depression Scale, Beck Hopelessness Scale, Cognitive Flexibility Inventory were used as measurement instruments. 75 % participants were women; 51.50 % were between 26-45 age. Cognitive flexibility total scores and subscale scores were negatively correlated with depressive symptoms. Cognitive flexibility total, Alternatives, Control subscale scores were negatively correlated with Beck Hopelessness Scale. Partial correlation analysis revealed that control subscale as a subdimension of cognitive flexibility which involves the perception of the new situations as controllable has negative relationship with depressive symptomatology while total cognitive flexibility scores has not significant relationship with depressive symptomatology. Our study demonstrated that cognitive flexibility level has negative relationship with depressive symptomatology. While hopelessness plays an effective role on the relationship between cognitive flexibility and depressive symptomatology, control subdimesion of cognitive flexibility is associated with depressive symptoms independently.
Key words: Cognitive flexibility, depressive symptoms, hopelessness
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