Executive Functioning: Key Ingredient in Lifetime Performance

Some people are hard-working and complete their jobs immediately, whereas others wait till the last day to complete their duties. While, some students can act according to rules, others can’t. Why do people differ in their ability to control their thoughts and behaviors? What are the cognitive and biological bases of individual differences?

Our brain and mind develops through our lifetime and at the center of this structure, we have skills called executive functioning. Executive functioning is a set of general-purpose control processes that regulate one’s thoughts and behaviors. It is a mental process that helps connect past experience with present action. This feature of executive functioning is also important for meaningful learning. Considering, the most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. People use executive functioning to perform activities such as planning, organizing, strategizing, paying attention to and remembering details, and managing time and space. It highly correlates with metacognitive skills of an individual. This process requires not just thinking about your own thinking, it also requires the strategies that you going to use to accomplish a certain duty.

Therefore, a child has to manage and regulate a lot of information and at the same time s/he has to avoid distractions. Obviously, sometimes there can be individuals who are struggling with these skills. This deficit leads many students to have learning disabilities. The prefrontal cortex is important for executive function. But, it also involves controlling your behavior through its interactions with all other parts of the brain.  Executive functions improve radically over the first few years and it continues to improve through adolescence. A research has conducted to determine the frequency, nature, and severity of executive dysfunction (EDF) at 8 years of age in extremely low birth weight (ELBW)/very preterm infants who were born in the 1990s, compared with normal birth weight (NBW) control subjects. The ELBW/very preterm cohort exhibited significant EDF compared with their NBW peers in all areas assessed. The ELBW/very preterm children also displayed more behavioral problems indicative of EDF than the NBW children. So, we can explicitly see that innate traits and developmental process have a great effect on executive functioning.

However, these are not the only concepts, which affects executive functions. As well as a person’s executive function abilities are shaped by physical changes in the brain and it also affects by life experiences. Still, who have executive dysfunction can be successful in life. Early attentions to develop these skills are crucial. Giving direct instructions, continual reassurance and accurate feedback are essential steps in the way to develop individuals’ executive function abilities. There are many people who struggle with executive dysfunctions. However, there is one thing that they have to remember: It is not a failure and they can achieve success! Early attentions of sophisticated instructors are essential in order for the successful development of these capacities.

References:

[1] National Center for Learning Disabilities, What is executive functioning?, NCLD Editorial Team

[2] Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University, InBrief: Executive Function: Skills for Life and Learning

[3] Executive Functioning in School-Aged Children Who Were Born Very Preterm or With Extremely Low Birth Weight in the 1990s, Peter J. Anderson, PhD, Lex W. Doyle, MD, Victorian Infant Collaborative Study Group, Offical Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics

[4] The Nature and Organization of Individual Differences in Executive Functions: Four General Conclusions, Akira Miyake and Naomi P. Friedman, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado at Boulder and Institute for Behavioral Genetics, University of Colorado at Boulder