From Your School Psychologist…

Mental Health Minute: Executive Functioning Skills – Part 2

In Part 1 of this Mental Health Minute, we discussed the first component of Executive Functioning Skills: Behavioral or Emotional Regulation. In Part 2, we will now discuss Meta-cognitive Skills. What is Meta-Cognition? It is the ability to step back and take a look at ourselves in a situation. It includes the ability to observe how we problem solve, our self-evaluation skills, and self-monitoring. In essence, it is our ability to think about our thinking!

What do Meta-Cognitive Skills Include?

1) Task Initiation: The ability to start projects in a timely and efficient fashion without undue procrastination. Children with a deficit in this area show great difficulty with creative problem solving and often do not take initiative. They may often be misjudged as “lazy” or “defiant”.

2) Working Memory: The ability to perform complex tasks while holding information in memory. The working memory is essential in carrying out multi-step activities, complex instructions, and mental arithmetic. Children with this skill deficit often seem forgetful and need help staying on task.

3) Plan/ Organize: This category includes the ability to make decisions about prioritizing what is important to focus on and what is not. It enables us to create a goal and to establish the roadmap of how we are going to accomplish it. These kids often do not start work till the last minute; they become overwhelmed with large assignments, and tend to get caught up in the details of things instead of seeing the big picture.

4) Organization of Materials: This is the ability to keep orderliness in all aspects of our lives such as work, school, and home. Children who have difficulty with this executive function are disorganized, can have messy backpacks and desks, and often lose things.

5) Monitor: This skill covers both work related monitoring and self-monitoring. Work-related monitoring is the ability to go back and check over one’s work for errors. Self-monitoring includes the ability to think about one’s behavior and to note when it may be bothersome to others or inappropriate for the situation. Children with deficits in this area often make careless errors, have sloppy work, leave work incomplete, and often do not realize the effect their behavior has on others.

So how can teachers and staff address executive skill weaknesses in students?

There are two methods to address deficits in executive functioning which include intervening at the environmental level or intervening at the level of the person.

How to intervene at the Environmental Level:

  • Change the ways cues are provided: Examples include verbal or visual prompts, schedules or lists to follow, or audiotaped cues.
  • Change the physical or social environment: Have the student sit closer to the teacher or away from distractions, or team up a student who is highly organized with the student who struggles with organization skills.
  • Change the way adults interact with students: This can include assigning an aide to a student or moving a child to a smaller classroom if resources permit. It can also mean asking those children questions to help them develop “meta-cognition” such as: “How are you going to finish this homework by tomorrow?” or “How might you go about figuring out an answer to this question, what steps would you take?”
  • Change the nature of the tasks the students are expected to perform: Examples include turning open-ended assignments into closed-ended assignments, making the task shorter, breaking a big project into smaller more manageable steps, or giving written instead of verbal directions.

How to intervene at the Individual Level:

  • Describe the problem behaviors in observable terms. It is important for the problem behaviors to be defined as specifically as possible and to identify behaviors that can be seen and/or heard.
  • Set a goal. The goal is one that directly relates to the problem behavior. It is often beneficial to have the student assist in coming up with the goal.
  • Establish steps needed in order to reach the goal. Come up with a step-by-step procedure/plan to help the student reach the mutually created goal. Use of a checklist to outline the steps needed works well and allows the student to follow the guidelines easily.
  • Supervise the student to ensure they can and are following each step or procedure. The early phase of teaching children executive skills requires adult interaction and guidance to help the student learn and understand the procedure. This includes going over how to start, prompting the student to perform each step in the procedure, observing them when they complete a step, providing feedback on their performance, and praising them for successfully completing each step.
  • Fade the supervision by gradually decreasing the number of prompts and frequency of checking in with the student to make sure they are following the step-by –step instructions.

References

Dawson, P. & Guare, R. (2003).Executive Skills: Information and Strategies for Educators. Helping Children at Home and School II: Handouts for Families and Educators, 53-56.