Executive Functions

Executive Functions (EF) is a term used mostly by mental health professionals and neuroscientists to describe a unique set of mental functions. Research has shown that these functions are performed by the prefrontal lobes of the brain, together with the limbic system. It has only been within the past ten years that executive functions have been fully recognized for their significance in cognitive (mental) and emotional functioning. More specifically, executive functions play a major role in thinking-before-acting and organizing ourselves to start tasks, self-awareness, and our physical activity level. They also create and guide our purposeful, goal-directed, problem-solving actions. Experts describe executive functions as "metacognition", meaning that they perform coordination and management actions that determine how we think and behave.

Russell A. Barkley, Ph.D. (U. of South Carolina) and Thomas E. Brown, Ph.D. (Yale), two of the most respected researchers in the ADHD field, believe that ADHD is primarily a disorder where Executive Functions are impaired. The following details about EF are provided to demonstrate more exactly how ADHD symptoms impair a person’s functioning.

Here’s what Executive Functions do:

Mobilize mental and physical resources to start a task

Manage short-term or working memory resources

Direct the storage of information in long-term memory

Handle retrieval of information from working, short-term & long-term memory

Monitor and regulate speed of information processing

Oversee switching between big-picture and detail thinking

Inhibit knee-jerk behavioral responses

Focus and sustain attention while filtering out interference

Stop and return to an ongoing activity smoothly

Shift cognitive resources to focus on new demands or a new set of priorities

Regulate social behavior including empathy and social sensitivity

Enable self-observation and self-analysis

Apply hindsight and foresight in processing information

Modify motor output and alter performance based on feedback

Executive Functions have a huge impact on our capacity to learn new information, perform what we already know, and adapt to new environments and challenges. The development of attentional control, goal-setting, problem-solving and self-regulation of emotion starts in infancy and continues through preschool and school-age years.

Demands on our executive functions are limited until about 3-4th grades. This is when the volume and complexity of required tasks significantly increases. Later, as children make the adjustment from learning specific academic skills (e.g., reading, writing, calculating) to applying these skills in new areas of learning (e.g., literary analysis, report writing, algebra) the demands on executive functions increase even more dramatically. Also, as children enter middle school, they must contend with much less organizational support than they had in elementary school.

The following table provides a guide for understanding how executive function deficits may affect children and adolescents in school.

Mike Gingerich, LCSW, Ph.D.
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