Executive Functions

What are Executive Functions?
The term “Executive Functions” is often used to explain behaviors and refers to higher-level cognitive abilities that enable an individual to successfully engage in independent goal-directed behavior. These capacities are most commonly linked to the frontal cortex and they guide complex behavior over time through planning, decision-making and self-monitoring of judgments and impulses.

The term is a business metaphor, where the executive monitors all of the different departments so that the company can move forward in as efficient and effective a way as possible. Who we are, how we organize our lives, and how we plan and then execute those plans is largely guided by the frontal regions of our brain.

Executive Functions include:

• Organization: attention, decision-making, planning, sequencing, problem solving
• Regulation: initiation of action, self-control, self-regulation

Defective executive behavior typically involves a cluster of deficiencies in these aspects of functioning, not just one (Lezak, 2004). Deficits have been associated with damage to the prefrontal cortex, as well as interconnected cortical and subcortical brains structures.

Behaviors Associated with Impaired Executive Functions:

• Socially inappropriate behavior
• Inability to apply consequences from past actions
• Difficulty with abstract concept formations (the inability to make the leap from the
  symbolic to the real world)
• Difficulty in planning and initiation (getting started)
• Difficulty with verbal fluency
• Inability to shift mental sets (deciding on a task – also known as a “set”, maintaining that task for a period of time, then deciding to do something else – a different “set”)
• Difficulty processing, storing, and/or retrieving information
• Needs frequent “policing” by others to monitor the appropriateness of their actions
• Fine motor skills are more affected than gross motor skills. (Fine motor skills are small movements such as grabbing something with your thumb and forefinger. Gross motor skills are the bigger movements such as running and jumping)
• Moody “roller coaster” emotions
• May demonstrate lack of remorse toward people and animals and show apathy toward activities
• Unawareness or denial that their behavior is a problem

The instruments used to assess executive behavior are intensely demanding of concentration because they require mental agility, foresight, planning, freedom from distraction and mental set shifting. Widely used tests include the Word Fluency task, Stroop tests, Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, Trailmaking Test and the Porteus Mazes.

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