Exploring the Effect of Cognitive Fatigue on Cognitive Flexibility Considering the Mediatory Role of Cognition among Female Students

The present study tried to investigate the effect of cognitive exhaustion on student’s cognitive flexibility with the mediating role of need for cognition among BA student of Farhangian University of arak in academic year 2015/16. In order to collect data, Cacioppo & Petty (1984) need for cognition questionnaire, diagnostic tasks which are similar to diagnostic tasks of Sedek & Kofta (1990), shahgholian, et al Wisconsin Card Sorting Task software (version), were applied. According to need for cognition questionnaire, 60 female students were selected out of a group of 150 and randomly assigned to four groups of 15. The experiment consisted of second phases. In the first phase, the participants were exposed to diagnostic problems and then in the second phase, they took the cognitive flexibility test, in order to drawing a comparison between the groups. The research data were analyzed by one-way ANCOVA. The results showed that cognitive exhaustion has a significant negative effect on cognitive flexibility and the interactive role of need for cognition was confirmed regarding to research variables. The finding of the present study give serious consideration to the central role of cognitive exhaustion and need for cognition in people’s amount of flexibility.