Excerpts

Preface

Executive function is a neuropsychological concept referring to the cognitive processes required to plan and direct activities, including task initiation and follow-through, working memory, sustained attention, performance monitoring, inhibition of impulses, and goal-directed persistence. While the groundwork for development of these skills occurs before birth, we believe they develop gradually and in a clear progression through the first two decades of life. But from the moment that children begin to interact with their environment, adults have expectations for how they will use executive skills to negotiate many of the demands of childhood – from the self-regulation of behavior required to act responsibly to the planning and initiation skills required to complete chores and homework. Parents and teachers expect children to use executive skills even though they may little understand what these skills are and how they impact behavior and school performance.

Our first introduction to executive skills came through our work with children and teenagers who had sustained traumatic brain injuries. Problems involving planning and organization, time management, and memory, as well as weaknesses with inhibition and regulation of emotions, have long described a significant component of traumatic brain injury. Executive skills have also assumed an increasingly important role in the explanation of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). While our introduction to these skills originally came in our work with these populations, we have seen a growing number of youngsters who seem to struggle in school because of weaknesses in executive skills even when they do not meet the diagnostic criteria for ADHD or another disorder. We believe that these students will benefit from interventions designed to improve executive functioning. To do so, however, requires an understanding of what executive skills are, how they develop in children, and how they impact school performance. We have written this book to shed light on these important cognitive processes so that parents and teachers can better help children hone these skills for the purpose of achieving long-term independence – the ultimate desirable outcome of childhood.

While this book is written primarily for school psychologists and other educational professionals such as social workers, guidance counselors, and special educators, whose job it is to work with youngsters whose executive skills may be impaired, we also believe that the book will be of interest to clinical psychologists who see these children in private practice or a therapeutic setting, as well as regular education teachers and parents whose job it is to help children apply executive skills to the demands of the classroom and tasks of daily living.