Executive Functioning

It’s all about the skills necessary for the cognitive control of behavior. It involves aspects of cognitive proficiency, the ability to focus, to monitor one’s attention, and the impact of one’s behavior on oneself and others.

In students who are not neuro-typical, these abilities will take longer to develop! Moreover, even in neuro-typical individuals, the pre-frontal cortex is not fully developed until the early 20s!

Executive Functions include:

• Impulse Control: the ability to think before you act

• Emotional Regulation: the ability to monitor and control your emotional reactions

• Shifting: the ability to switch from one activity to another, or adjust when plans change

• Initiating: the ability to start a task or assignment

• Planning: the ability to think through the steps towards a goal

• Organizing: the ability to keeps things in a logical order or location

• Working Memory: the ability to keep one piece of information in mind while doing something else; i.e. keeping your whole “to-do” list in mind while completing one task at a time

• Self-Monitoring: the ability to think about and analyze your own actions

This set of skills becomes more and more important as we get older.  When we are young, our parents act as surrogate “executives”.  As adolescents and adults, we need to do these things for ourselves.

A Note About ADHD

ADHD is a medical diagnosis in Canada, so will not be discussed at length here. Not everyone with challenges in executive functioning has ADHD. However, every individual with ADHD will demonstrate some level of challenge in executive functioning.

ADHD is commonly understood as “not paying attention” – but that’s not the whole story.  

People with ADHD most often are paying attention to too much, not too little.

In fact, we can even go as far as to say that children and adults with ADHD do not struggle with paying attention – they struggle with knowing where to put their attention.  So it’s not about “paying more attention”: it’s about “paying attention to the right things”.

Therefore, we can help our kids best by teaching skills to regulate their attention: to pay attention to the right things, at the right time, and in the right order.

How to Help:

Strategies to Support Executive Functioning:

Develop routines! If something is routine we don’t need to actively think about it! Routines decrease stress and lower that cognitive load!

• Make routines VISUAL. This helps to make organizational skills into habits. For individuals with working memory issues, routines are a method of lightening the cognitive load so that more cognitive power is available for learning.

• Make the schedule visual! Sticky notes can be a great way to quickly make instructions and routines visual, and age-appropriate.

Be Consistent! Make sure there is as much consistency as possible between home and school.

• Explicitly teach organizational skills

• Provide more time if needed on tests!

• Reduce environmental distractions, e.g. noise or overly stimulating visual environment. (or use strategies like noise-canceling headphones)

• Avoid multitasking – e.g. note-taking AND listening to the lecture. This will increase the cognitive load.
  

Chunk assignments!

• Keeping information short with breaks for storage will prove helpful. Provide repetition and keep stress down

• Structure each assignment into steps so that the assignment feels doable. Turn a mountain in to a series of molehills.

• Make sure that the first step is supported e.g. example, modeling.

• Emphasize QUALITY over QUANTITY!
  
  Use direct and clear instructions!

• (use the KISS method – Keep It Short and Sweet)

• Use numbered points for any sequence. Underline or highlight important information in directions. Double-space written instructions. Write directions in a different colour on worksheets.

• Keep oral language simple. If you repeat the instruction – use the same language.

• Make instructions multisensory. Make certain instructions remain available in a visual form for students.

• Ask the individual to paraphrase instruction – this checks for the accuracy of understanding and also provides verbal rehearsal.

• Be consistent with language, avoid multi-step directions where possible, be very specific, use repetition!

Brain Breaks

Brain breaks are important for everyone but doubly important for individuals with distraction and working memory issues. They help to focus and also provide time for working memory to get solidified into long term memory.

• There has been research about how rhythm and music supports focus and brain stimulation. Music is a distraction for many people, but in some cases for children with attention dysregulation it provides enough stimulation that the individual does not seek other distraction and focus is maintained. http://additudemag.com/music-therapy-for-adhd-how-rhythm-builds-focus
  

Support Planning

• Walk through the planning process. Use think alouds.

• Sarah Ward has some suggestions including a strategy using ‘future glasses’. http://efpractice.com/
  
  

Use Technology when appropriate!

• Apps like Picture Scheduler allow the student to create picture tasks and ‘to do’ lists.  Students set alerts to remind them to do a task. It can show step-by-step pictures.  Audio can be added. 

• Provide direct instruction in the use of an assignment calculator to break down large projects into manageable tasks (see www.lib.umn.edu/help/calculator/ and http://apps.library.ryerson.ca/assignment-calculator/).

Encourage goal setting and self-assessment strategies

• Studies have shown that the ability to think about how we learn and to be aware of our abilities can help even more than direct instruction on tasks like numeracy and literacy.

• Encourage the student to self-monitor and thus develop this metacognition. Encourage her to self-assess and self-advocate