Week 1 - Executive Functions Flashcards
What are School Psychologists experts in?
- Learning
- Behavior
- Mental health
- School systems
What do school psychologists provide?
- Academic, behavioral and mental health support
- Evaluation, assessment, and data analysis
- Consultation with teachers and families
What do school psychologists support?
- Struggling and diverse learners
- Student achievement and well-being
- School - family communication
How do school psychologists promote positive behavior and mental health?
- Promote student motivation and engagement
- Conduct psychological and academic assessments
- Individualize instruction and interventions
- Manage student and classroom behavior
- Monitor student progress
- Collect and interpret student and classroom data
- Reduce inappropriate referrals to special education
How do school psychologists support diverse learners?
- Assess diverse learning needs
- Provide culturally responsive services to students and families from diverse backgrounds
- Plan appropriate Individualized Education Programs for students (with disabilities)
- Modify and adapt curricula and instruction
- Adjust classroom facilities and routines to improve student engagement and learning
- Monitor and effectively communicate with parents about student progress
How do school psychologists create safe, positive school climates?
- Prevent bullying and other forms of violence
- Support social-emotional learning
- Assess school climate and improve school connectedness
- Implement and promote positive discipline and restorative justice
- Implement school-wide positive behavioral supports
- Identify at risk students and school vulnerabilities
- Provide crisis prevention and intervention services
What is executive functioning?
- Concentration
- Juggling multiple demands
- Adapting to changing circumstances
- Working with others
- Dealing with setbacks
- Inhibiting immediate rewards
Consequences of low EF
- Worse school performance
- Difficulty keeping jobs
- Lower income
- Difficulties maintaining relationships
- increased risk for mental health problems
Definition EF
Umbrella term for various cognitive processes that give rise to goal-directed behavior
- Novel & demanding situations
- Flexible adjustment
- Adaptive behavior, creativity
What are the three core components of EF
- Working Memory
- Inhibitory control
- Cognitive Flexibility
What is working memory?
The ability to hold information in
mind (maintenance) and mentally
work with it (manipulation)
What is inhibitory control?
The ability to suppress interfering
thought and actions that are not
relevant to the task at hand
Cognitive flexibility
The ability to change one’s
perspective or approach to a
problem, flexibly adjusting to new
demands, rules, or priorities
In which clinical groups is EF impaired?
- ADHD
- Learning disabilities
- Depression
Measure of simple EF
- Go/No-Go Task
Advantages of measures of simple EF?
Advantages:
* Better predictor of EF problems in daily life
* Better predictor of school performance
Disadvantages:
* More difficult to identify disability
* More difficult to track development
Measure of Complex EF
- Tower of London
- Stroop Task
- Delayed Gratification task
- Dimensional Change Card Sorting Test
- WCST
Tower of London
Measures: spatial problem solving, planning
Task difficulty increases
with the number of
moves needed to solve
the problem
Stroop Task
Measures: automatic response inhibition
Delayed gratification task
Measures: self-regulation, inhibition
Dimensional Change Card Sorting Test
Measures: cognitive flexibility, switching and shifting
Wisconsin Card Sorting Test
- More difficult than DCCS
- No explicit instructions about rule
- No instruction when rule changes
- You have to infer sorting rule based on
feedback
Brief/Brief-2
- Often used in clinical practice or school setting to
assess executive functioning in 5-18 year - Filled out by teachers and/or parent
- BRIEF-2 also 11-18 year olds can fill out a form
Brain regions of EF
- Dorsolateral PFC: Working Memory
- Orbitalfrontal Cortex: Inhibition
- Medial PFC: Cognitive Flexibility
Neuroscience methods
- Patients with frontal lobe damage
- NFL Players
- Imaging healthy brains of children and adolescents
- Task related fMRI
Feedback learning
- Learning from previous behavior
* Essential to learn from feedback on your behavior in order to learn - Multiple executive functions
* In order to learn from feedback you rely on multiple executive functions, such as working memory, cognitive flexibility and inhibition
What does feedback learning predict?
Feedback learning performance and neural activity predict Real-world Learning:
* Reading fluency
* Mathematics
What happens to executive functions in adolescence?
Impulsive, not thinking about long-term
consequences, difficulty planning
No deficits in executive functions
PFC better than in childhood (although
not fully developed yet) but peak in
emotional sensitivity
Which executive brain area develops relatively late?
DLPFC
By what is behavior influenced during adolescence
Cognitive and emotional brain regions
Adolescents are driven by immediate rewards
What was the result of the marshmallow test?
Test predicted performance on the emotional
go/no-go task 40 years later!
Ability to suppress GO reaction to happy
faces in adulthood is associated with ability
to
self-regulate at age 4
Implications:
* Individual differences appear early in
development
* Can we improve EF? Effective
interventions
