Executive Functions seems to be a term that is thrown around a lot these days. In many different settings and as it relates to all sorts of people, diagnoses and skills. You may hear about executive functions in people post stroke or people with a traumatic brain injury. It is increasingly being used in education settings, though how it is defined continues to vary. What most experts do agree on is that executive functions are the foundation on which all people learn and grow.
As McCloskey (2011) states,
“The term Executive Functions refers to a diverse group of cognitive processes that act in a coordinated way to direct perception, emotion, thought and action.”
According to McCloskey there are 7 main skill clusters, which all contain a combination of sub-skills. I plan to go into much more detail in upcoming posts but for now I wanted to provide an overview of what I think are some of the most important clusters. The only way I’ve been able to learn about executive functions is by having them broken down into easy to understand concepts. When I see a super long lists of all the skills involved, personally I get a bit overwhelmed.
The infographic below (which I created after an embarrassingly long time yelling at powerpoint) highlights what I believe to be some “big hitters” of the executive function system. This is not to say that any of the skills I didn’t list aren’t important. All skills related to executive functions are meaningful, because these skills cannot function independently. They build on each other, much like a symphony, they function best when every part is in tune. However my goal for this post is not to go into depth about each and every skil. It is to give in overview to help connect how these skills can directly correlate to the development and behavior we might see with children and adults who are struggling with their executive functions and/or language skills.
Image Copyright 2023 Lysandra Sykes, Bloom Wildflowers Therapy
Here is a bit more about each cluster pictured, however this is by no means comprehensive. Think of this article as a mini quiche, bite-sized enough to get a taste but certainly not a full meal.
*Attention
This is not only one’s ability to pay attention, but also the ability to perceive the environment as well as sustain attention. Often attention is lumped into one broad category, but there are several levels of attention which fluctuate depending on the activity. Some children are not yet perceiving their environment, these may be the children that don’t seem aware of the other people in the room or even when they go from one place to another. Some children can sustain attention to tasks they prefer or are interested in for an hour, but struggle to sustain attention to a task that is non-preferred for 5 minutes. Non-preferred being something such as math homework or clearing up their toys. The ability to attend varies a lot depending on the cognitive demand, that is tasks with higher cognitive demand are more taxing to children and adults. However if children are expected to demonstrate the same level of attention regardless of the task, it often sets them up to be frustrated, disregulated or disengaged.
*Working Memory
There are so many different views and definitions of what “working memory” entails. For the work I do in my field, the two most important aspects of working memory involve the pictures and movies we see in our head, aka our imagination and our ability to hear, process and manipulate speech sounds or phonemes. One of the biggest issues I see with children and teens struggling to develop at the same rate as their peers are issues with one or both parts of their working memory. Sometimes a child is struggling with making good pictures in their head, which is what allows them to anchor information. If I tell you to think about an apple tree, you can probably pull up a picture inside your mind. I don’t need to show you a picture, you already have one inside your head. The pictures and movies we see in our minds allow us to process and store information. If when a child is listening to a story they don’t make any pictures in their mind, they have no anchor to keep that information, they are just words. There is no meaning being created inside their mind.
Verbal working memory on the other hand is dealing with the speech sounds, being able to hold and manipulate the sounds we use to make words. This can also involve our “self talk”, the inner voice we use to talk to ourselves in our head. Children struggling in this area may have issues with reading, spelling, being able to produce speech sounds at an age appropriate level, following directions and remembering words to name a few. This varies so much from child to child, but working memory is one of the most important subsets of executive functions and so many schools and/or programs don’t target them directly.
*Engagement
This domain covers several crucial skills, but perhaps most important is inhibition. The ability to not react solely on impulse, but to be able to pause between an impulse and an action. Many of the other skills in this cluster such as pausing, stopping, being able to shift from one task to another, flexibility, all require the ability to inhibit. There are many issues children and even adults can when they are unable to inhibit. This ability to inhibit is what allows so many other skills to be built. When a child is struggling to inhibit they often have several areas of their executive function system that need strengthening. It can show up in so many ways such as children who grab everything in sight, frequently interrupt or talk out of turn, run around in places that it’s not safe, or are rough with other children. This can look very different depending on the child but many of the common issues labeled as “bad behavior” involve children struggling at least in part with inhibition and self awareness.
*Attention, working memory and inhibition are three core areas that allow us to build all the other skills. If a child cannot attend to an activity for more than 1 minute, it will be very hard for them to acquire language. If a child cannot anchor information with their working memory, they are only aware of the present. They cannot see into the past or try to predict into the future. If a child cannot inhibit, they may often get into trouble in the classroom but not understand why or how to change.
Self awareness
The skill of self awareness also includes self monitoring in the moment as well as being able to self correct. Being aware of your behaviors is critical to being able to be independent. If a child is not aware of their thoughts, actions or behavior they will always be looking for external sources for their executive function. For a child to be able to inhibit, notice when they are paying attention, notice when they read the wrong word or don’t answer a question correctly, they have to first be aware of their behavior. This is one of the hardest skills for children and even adults to master. It also requires a child to have some abilities in the first three clusters above.
Emotional Regulation
Some people don’t include this in executive functions, but as a whole separate category. Emotional regulation is absolutely in it’s own category, because it effects every other part of thinking. I’ve included it in this list because it is one of the most important parts of a child’s ability to learn and develop. If someone is disregulated, than they are not going to be able to learn. Or often even think logically. Emotional disregulation, depending on the severity, will likely involve other professionals such as occupational therapy and psychologists/counselors. SLPs can also help a lot in this area, such as helping someone become aware of their emotional state (self-awareness, attention) and teach them how to handle situations where they have big emotions (working memory, inhibition, pausing, flexibility, etc). This does not mean that SLPs should be seen in place of mental health professionals but SLPs may be another helpful part of the team. SLPs can help with teaching about the connections of thoughts, to feelings, to body sensations, and what actions result because of these processes.
Time sense
This is organized differently depending on the model you use, but to me executive function skills such as the ability to pace, sequence, gauge, estimate and execute all contain a huge component around understanding time. Knowing how long something takes can also make a huge difference in actually starting and completing tasks versus procrastinating a task because you don’t know where to start. Being able to gauge what is needed for a task, how many tasks you can complete in a set time, what is a realistic time frame to allow for larger project, what might go wrong, all of these skills require an ability to not only understand time, but also have a realistic idea of what you as an individual are capable of doing in an day (or week or month). These types of skills may not be directly targeted until a child or teen has a solid foundation in many of the above skills listed.
Planning
This includes the ability to plan, organize, make decisions and prioritize. These may also be referred to as metacognitive skills, because they take so many other skills to do effectively. Even as adults we struggle with these skills, because they take so much cognitive effort. In order to make a realistic plan, you need to be able to have a good working memory, be self aware of what you can and can’t do, have a sense of how long things take, inhibit yourself from rushing in to do something and be able to regulate your emotions so that you can think clearly. Difficulty with time sense and planning skills may become more apparent in teens or young adults who did “fine” in school but are struggling more in high school or college because the demands on them are so much higher. Additionally the external structure and/or supports they had from their parents or schools are not there anymore and if they did not internalize the necessary executive function skills to organize their lives, they will likely struggle when they are all of a sudden on their own.
Phew. Even in my effort to summarize that was still is a whole lot of information. If you made it this far, give yourself the mightiest of fives.
Below are all executive function clusters according to George McCloskey, whose model is one of the most widely used. As you can see some of his domains are laid out differently than I have explained above. The visual and explanations I have above are still using his framework as well as the work of Tera Sumpter, but I combined or generalized certain skills in the effort to give a good overview.
I'll have plenty more to come as I dive into these skills as well as how to help support kids/adults who struggle with these skills, but for now please comment anything you learned! Or what questions you have about executive functions. Or what you would like to hear more about.
Please visit our homepage to inquire about speech, language and executive function services for kids and teens in North Carolina. Consultation and parent coaching services also available!
References
McCloskey, G. (2011). Executive Functions: A General Overview. Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine.
Sumpter, T. (2021). The seeds of learning: An online learning community; A cognitive processing model for speech, language, literacy and executive functioning. Mighty Networks: https://community.terasumpter.com/
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