Unlocking Executive Dysfunction Part 1: Essential Insights
November 14, 2024
Holston Academy recently hosted another Coffee & Connections webinar, an opportunity for everyone in the Holston community–and beyond–to get together and discuss today’s most relevant topics in the world of education. This session is part one of a two-part series that covers Executive Disfunction insights and tips and tools.
Holston Academy recently hosted another Coffee & Connections webinar, an opportunity for everyone in the Holston community–and beyond–to get together and discuss today’s most relevant topics in the world of education. In this session, Unlocking Executive Dysfunction: Essential Insights & Actionable Tips, Rose Saluti, Outreach Coordinator for Beyond BookSmart (the largest executive function coaching company), led a discussion about executive function (EF), the challenges students face regarding EF, and how they can best manage it.
During her presentation, Rose took a deep dive into these topics and proposed some very helpful solutions and tools along the way. Let’s look at the highlights of the webinar.
What Are Executive Functions?
Executive function is the process by which the brain interacts with the ability to perform and maintain essential daily tasks. In other words, executive functions include skills needed in order to reach a goal or objective. These include daily skills such as time management, prioritization of tasks, organizational skills, follow-through of steps to completion, as well as some communication skills.
Executive functioning skills allow you to do a few things:
- Complete tasks over extended time periods
- Manage behavior and thought processes
- Look at circumstances and make decisions that lead to successful outcomes based on current information
Unfortunately, there are many children out there who struggle with executive functions…yet parents don’t immediately recognize the challenges their child is facing. “We see that parents don’t understand the child’s actual need until somebody says to them, ‘It’s an executive function challenge,’” explained Rose during the presentation. “Some people think these kids are lazy, some people think they don’t care. Trust me, they do care.”
Executive function skills reside in the front part of the brain, called the prefrontal cortex. However, the part of your brain that controls emotions can sometimes take over the prefrontal cortex–the amygdala, which controls our fight/flight/freeze reflexes. When a person is in that fight/flight/freeze mode, the prefrontal cortex shuts down, rendering the executive function skills almost irrelevant. That’s why it’s especially important for everyone to be able to access executive function skills at all times.
Types of Executive Function Skills
Executive function skills can vary, depending on how you want to look at them. Here is a list of what are considered to be EF skills:
- Attention: The ability to stay in focus and shift quickly between tasks while maintaining attention. This requires the ability to sustain focus. “People think that they can multitask and pay attention to this and that–the fact of the matter is, you can’t,” explained Rose. “You can switch tasks, but you really can’t be efficient when multitasking. You have to pay attention.”
- Task initiation: This critical skill involves the ability to get started on a task–particularly one that is mundane and not preferred. Procrastination is an example of poor task initiation skills.
- Organization: Somewhat self-explanatory, organization is the ability to arrange objects (such as words and thoughts) in a structured, systematic manner.
- Planning: This is the ability to complete a task or project. Planning often requires an outline of the steps necessary to take a project from its beginning to its end.
- Prioritizing: The ability to rank items in order of importance or urgency.
- Time management: This skill is often reliant on other skills, such as planning and prioritizing. If you’re unable to plan or prioritize, you’re unlikely to successfully manage your time.
- Memory: A higher-order executive function, memory comprises working memory (which allows you to keep the information you’re using to complete a task at the forefront of your mind) as well as short-term memory, which is the ability to temporarily store information until we’re ready to send it to another part of the brain.
Self-Regulation, The Core of EF Skills
Serving as the core of all executive function skills is self-regulation, which is the ability to maintain and adjust your emotional state when faced with frustration, sadness, fear, or excitement. In life, whether we’re going through positive or negative emotions and situations, we must be able to regulate ourselves in order to function.
“When you see kids who are easily frustrated by situations and appear overwhelmed, they may lash out,” said Rose. “They may be anxious about a test, so they avoid. They have racing thoughts, trouble making decisions, poor impulse control. They’re fidgety and jittery. That’s self-regulation, the core of all EF skills.”
Without self-control and self-regulation of our emotions and impulses, a ripple effect often occurs. When we grow very frustrated and anxious, it’s more difficult to focus. And if we’re unable to focus, it’s much more challenging to create a solid plan, begin our work, and remain organized. The ripple effect builds and results in compromised working memory and decision-making skills.
Why?
“When we’re stressed, we’re using the amygdala, which doesn’t allow our prefrontal cortex to operate properly,” explained Rose. “So we have to manage self-regulation before we can manage the rest of the executive functions.”
The Misperception of Executive Dysfunction
When people struggle with executive function skills, looks can be deceiving. These people may appear to be lazy, unmotivated, impulsive, scattered, and even rude. The truth is, there are almost always underlying skills challenges that lead to these appearances. These EF skills deficits may include:
- Difficulty planning ahead
- Trouble regulating emotions
- No self-monitoring strategies
- Lack of strategies to maintain focus
- And more
Medical diagnoses are often at the heart of what contributes to executive function challenges. These diagnoses include autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, mood disorders, and traumatic brain injury.
Though the perception from afar may be that the outward signs of EF dysfunction are personality-driven or motivation-driven, the reality is far more complex. Rather, these symptoms point to serious underlying conditions that often require professional attention and care.
Now that you’re familiar with executive function and dysfunction, self-regulation, and the misperception of those with EF issues, we’ll dive into growth mindset, EF challenges, and the tools that can be used to address them in our next article!
In the meantime, if you’re interested in executive function coaching for your child, visit https://www.beyondbooksmart.com/ to learn more. You can also watch the entire webinar recording here.