What are Executive Functions?
Author: Erika Kawamura, Psy.D
The frontal lobe of your brain is responsible for conducting a set of mental skills and processes to help manage our behaviors, thoughts, emotions, and everyday tasks/activities; it also helps one to learn new materials, solve problems, & adapt to new situations. Broken down into further components, executive functions are comprised of the following 12 skills:
- Working Memory: Ability to hold and manipulate information in the mind while performing a task. It allows one to use past experiences and learning to apply to a current situation or project into the future.
- Planning/Prioritization: Ability to create a process and identify steps toward achieving a goal or complete a task, including making decisions regarding what is important to focus on and not.
- Goal-Directed Persistence: Ability to identify a goal and follow through with completing the goal without being thrown off or distracted by competing interests.
- Organization: Ability to structure and arrange information, materials, and tasks in a systematic manner.
- Sustained Attention: Ability to maintain focus on a situation or task, even in light of boredom, fatigue, or distractibility.
- Cognitive Flexibility: Ability to adapt thinking and behavior to changing situations, such as adjusting plans or switching between tasks/activities.
- Inhibition/Impulse Control: Ability to refrain from or delay actions, especially when it is deemed inappropriate, irrelevant, or unnecessary- “think before you act or say something.”
- Task Initiation: Ability to start tasks and refrain from procrastination, in an efficient and timely manner.
- Emotion Control: Ability to regulate and manage emotions in a way that is appropriate to situations. This can help one to achieve goals, complete tasks, or influence behaviors.
- Stress Tolerance: Ability to thrive in stressful situations and to cope with uncertainty, change, and performance demands.
- Metacognition: Ability to think about one’s own thoughts, monitor oneself, evaluate oneself, and observe one’s problem solving approaches.
- Time Management: Ability to organize time, estimate how much time one has, how to allocate time, and how to stay within deadlines.
When individuals have significant difficulties with many or all of these skills to the extent it interferes or impairs various areas in one’s life, it is often referred to as “executive dysfunction.” For example, such challenges can lead to poor time management, difficulties focusing on or initiating and completing tasks, forgetting details of tasks or directions, engaging in impulsive behaviors that one regrets later, or difficulty controlling emotions that can affect relationships.
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