Cognitive-shifting

Cognitive shifting is a method used in awareness management describing the mental process of re-directing one's focus of attention away from one fixation and toward a different focus of attention. This shifting process can be initiated either by habit and unconsciously (task switching), or as an act of conscious volition (cognitive shifting). Both are forms of cognitive flexibility.

In the general framework of cognitive therapy and awareness management, cognitive shifting refers to the conscious choice to take charge of one's mental habits—and redirect one's focus of attention in helpful, more successful directions. In the term's specific usage in corporate awareness methodology, cognitive shifting is a performance-oriented technique for refocusing attention in more alert, innovative, charismatic and empathic directions.

In cognitive therapy, as developed by its founder Aaron T. Beck and others, a client is taught to shift his or her cognitive focus from one thought or mental fixation to a more positive, realistic focus—thus the descriptive origins of the term "cognitive shifting". In "third wave" ACT therapy as taught by Steven C. Hayes and his associates in the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy movement, cognitive shifting is employed not only to shift from negative to positive thoughts, but also to shift into a quiet state of mindfulness. Cognitive shifting is also employed quite dominantly in the meditative-health procedures of medical and stress-reduction researchers such as Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Cognitive shifting has become a common term among therapists especially on the West Coast, and more recently in discussions of mind management methodology. More recently the term, as noted above, has appeared regularly in medical and psychiatric journals etc.

In research: The term has become fairly common in psychiatric research, used in the following manner: "Neuropsychological findings in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have been explained in terms of reduced cognitive shifting ability as a result of low levels of frontal inhibitory activity."

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