Dear Colleagues,
Last April, I came away from the NEALS conference at The Forman School excited about what I had learned from Dr. George McCloskey's presentation on executive functions. Distinguishing between learning and producing difficulties was groundbreaking for me; it just made sense given what I’ve observed of my students with executive function difficulties. At the same time, I felt like he only had time to scratch the surface in terms of explaining executive functions and its impact on learning. That prompted me to seek out McCloskey’s week-long seminar at The Cape Cod Institute. Wow, am I glad that I did!
During the third week of July, I had the pleasure of attending McCloskey’s “Assessment and Intervention for Child and Adolescent Executive Function Difficulties” course. Over the five days, McCloskey shared his model of executive functions and how to apply the model when assessing students and developing intervention plans for them.
The three major takeaways for me were:
ρExecutive functions (EFs) do not actually perform any specific action; rather EFs facilitate or help carry out the action. To help myself remember, I have developed an acronym for what EFs do: DIPC2 – directing (d), integrating (i), prompting (p), cueing (c), coordinating (c). So EFs do not do the listening or thinking, but EFs can trigger the listening and thinking.
ρThe difference in activation of the frontal lobe (the home of EFs) as seen on PET scans when presented with naive, practiced, and novel tasks was particularly profound. The naive task was described as a brand new task, never before presented to the subject. The practiced task was the exact same as the naive one, although time elapsed between trials. The novel task (much like most assessments given in school) was a task structured the same way, but with different test items. The PET scans indicated that the frontal lobe was particularly active during the naive and novel tasks, but relatively inactive on the practiced task. This makes complete sense given what we know about EFs; the visual of the PET scans just clinched it!
ρI now have a better understanding of the relationship between ADHD and EF. Inherently, being diagnosed with ADHD means having difficulties with executive functions. However, the reverse does not hold true - just because one struggles with executive functions does not mean one has ADHD. The diagnosis of ADHD indicates deficits in four core self-regulatory skills – the abilities to focus, sustain, modulate and inhibit. The difference in the profiles of students who have been diagnosed with ADHD lies in how the difficulties with the core skills interact with the constellation of the other twenty-nine self-regulatory skills.
Needless to say, the week was a worthwhile one. I have been applying what I learned all fall in my work with students, and my increased understanding of executive functions has helped me better explain it to parents. I highly recommend this conference and encourage all to attend this summer. Learning for four hours in the morning, and then having the rest of the afternoon and evening to “process” on the beach was particularly effective.
For additional information, feel free to contact me. Dr. McCloskey will also be presenting a course focused on the impact of EF and learning difficulties on reading, writing, and math, and how to address those who struggle doing so. Please let me know if this is something you would be interested in attending – I’m definitely planning on it!
Other Announcements:
ρSo many of you have expressed interest in the results from our survey. Few have taken the 5 minutes to fill it out PLEASE DO SO!
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2012NEALSsurvey
We need more data in order to make the results valid.
ρSAVE THE DATE! In the coming weeks, we will be sharing some exciting news about NEALS’ Annual Spring Conference. In the meantime, mark your calendars for April 15th. Trust me – you’re not going to want to miss it
Melissa Rubin