executive functions – Education & Teacher Conferences

Andrew Watson

December 22, 2024

Executive Functions “Debunked”?

As long as I’ve been in this field – heck, as long as I’ve been a teacher – the concept of executive function has floated around as a core way to discuss students’ academic development.

Although the concept has a technical definition – in fact, more than one — it tends to be presented as a list of cognitive moves: “prioritizing, switching, planning, evaluating, focusing, deliberately ignoring…”

I myself have tended to think of executive functions this way: all the cognitive skills that don’t include academic content, but matter in every discipline. So, if I’m trying to execute a lab in science class, I need to …

… focus on this thing, not that thing,

… decide where to begin,

… decide when to switch to the next step,

…realize that I’ve made a mistake,

…evaluate options to fix my mistake,

And so forth.

Crucially, that list applies to almost any academic task: writing an essay, or evaluating the reliability of a historical source, or composing a sentence in Spanish using a new verb tense…

So: these executive functions help students in school – no matter the class that they are in.

To say all this in another ways: EFs resist easy definition but are mightily important in schools and classrooms. (Truthfully they’re important in life, but that broader range lies outside of this blog’s focus.)

Today’s News

I recently saw an enthusiastic response to a newly-published study that explores, reconceptualizes — and debunks? — EFs. Because EFs “are mightily important,” such reconceptualization & debunkage merits our thoughtful attention.

Here’s the story.

A research team led by Andreas Demetriou wanted to see if they could translate that long list (“prioritizing, switching, evaluating,” etc.) into a core set of mental processes.

So: a carbon atom might look different from an iron atom, but both are different ways of putting protons, neutrons, and electrons together. Likewise, “prioritizing” and “switching” might seem like two different processes, but they could instead be different arrangements of the same mental elements.

Demetriou’s team focuses on two core mental processes – their “protons and electrons.” Roughly, those mental processes are:

Forming and holding a mental model of the goal, and
Mapping that mental model onto the situation or problem.

For complicated reasons, Team D combines these two processes with a label: the AACog mechanism. They then run a lengthy series of studies using a GREAT variety of different tests (Stroop this, Raven’s that) across a wide range of ages.

When they run all the calculations, sure enough: the AACog mechanism underlies all those other EFs we’ve been taught about over the years.

As they write: “AACog is the common core running through all executive functions.” (That’s an extraordinary claim, no?)

And, development of the AACog mechanisms explains all sorts of increasing mental capacities: symbolic exploration, drawing inferences, using deductive reasoning, and so forth. (The concentric circles representing this argument challenge all of my AACog mechanisms!)

In other words, this model explains an ENORMOUS amount of human cognitive processing by focusing on two elements.

What It All Means

I wrote above that this study received an “enthusiastic response” when it came out.

In my twitter feed at least, it was packaged with basically this message:

“All those people who were nattering on about EF were having you on. Look: we can boil it down to basically one thing. No need to make it so complicated!”

I can understand why Twitter responded this way: the title of the Demetriou et al. study is: “Executive function: Debunking an overprized construct.” No wonder readers think that the idea of EFs has been debunked!

At the same time, I’m not so sure. I have three reasons to hesitate:

First:

Quoth Dan Willingham: “One study is just one study, folks.” Until MANY more people test out this idea is MANY more ways, we shouldn’t suddenly stop thinking one thing (“EFs exist!”) and start thinking another (“EFs are the AACog mechanism in disguise!”).

We need more research — LOTS — before we get all debunky.

Second:

Let’s assume for a moment that the AACog mechanism hypothesis is true. What effect will that have on discussions in schools?

Honestly, I doubt very much.

The “AACog mechanism” is itself so abstract — as are the “modeling” and “mapping” functions that go into it — that I doubt they’ll usefully replace “exective functions” in daily conversations.

Imagine that a learning specialist says to me: “This student has a diagnosed problem with her AACog mechanism.”

I’ll probably respond: “I don’t understand. What does that mean?”

The learning specialist will almost certainly respond: “Well, she has difficulty with prioritizing, task switching, initiating, and so forth.”

We’re back to EF language in seconds.

Third:

I’m not sure I buy the argument that the “AACog mechanism” DEBUNKS “executive function.”

Imagine this logical flow:

Carbon and iron are made up of the same sub-elements: protons, neutrons, and electrons.
Therefore, carbon and iron don’t really exist.
Voila: we’ve debunked the idea of carbon and iron.

Well, that logic just doesn’t hold up. Carbon and iron DO exist, even as meaningfully different arrangements of sub-particles.

So too:

EFs all boil down to the AACog mechanism, which is itself just “mental modelling” and “mapping of models onto reality.”
Therefore, EFs don’t really exist.
Misson Debunk Accomplished!

I just don’t track that logic.

We understand human cognitive complexity better, but the complexity hasn’t gone away. (We understand carbon and iron better now that we know about protons and neutrons, but the periodic table is still complicated.)

This model helps us think differently about mental functions across academic disciplines. Those new thought patterns might indeed be helpful — especially to people who create conceptual diagrams of cognition.

But I don’t think it will radically change the way teachers think and talk about our students.

TL;DR

A group of thoughtful scholars have put together a new model of cognition explaining executive functions (and a whole lot more).

What does this mean for us?

In ten or fifteen years, EF experts might be talking to us differently about understanding and promoting these cognitive moves.
In the meantime, don’t let oversimplications on the interwebs distract you. Yes: “executive function” is a mushy and complicated category — and yes, people do go too far with this label. But something like EFs exist, and we do need to understand their complexity.

Demetriou, A., Kazali, E., Spanoudis, G., Makris, N., & Kazi, S. (2024). Executive function: Debunking an overprized construct. Developmental Review, 74, 101168.

Attack of the Teenage Brain!: Understanding and Supporting the Weird and Wonderful Adolescent Learner by John Medina

Rebecca Gotlieb

August 07, 2018

Attack of the Teenage Brain!: Understanding and Supporting the Weird and Wonderful Adolescent Learner by John Medina

John Medina, developmental molecular biologist and New York Times best-selling author, has written a book about how to parent and teach teenagers in light of what we know about adolescent social, cognitive, and neural development. In Attack of the Teenage Brain!: Understanding and Supporting the Weird and Wonderful Adolescent Learner, Medina emphasizes that designing better high schools will require us to consider the development of executive functioning skills during adolescence.

Paradoxically, while elementary schools and schools of higher education in the U.S. are exceptionally strong, our high schools have mediocre performance by international standards. Investing in executive functioning, or the skills that help us effectively and cooperatively get things done, may offer our best opportunity for improving U.S. high schools, Medina argues. Countries whose high schools perform better than ours, also have adolescents with stronger abilities to self-regulate, switch perspective, and temporarily store and manipulate information—the three core components of executive functioning. Medina reviews research by Walter Mischel (reviewed here by Learning and The Brain previously) that shows that the ability to delay gratification, a component of executive functioning, can predict many aspects of children’s future personal, academic, and career success.

To understand how to capitalize on adolescents’ executive functioning skills, it is helpful to understand how the brain changes during adolescence. Using clear, vivid, and accessible analogies, Medina explains several aspects of adolescent neural development that have implications for how we teach them. For example, adolescents’ limbic areas—areas responsible for many of our emotional responses—reach mature levels before the prefrontal cortex, an area responsible for decision-making, planning, and inhibition. This mismatching maturational profile partially explains why adolescence is a time of great vulnerability, why adolescents are more drawn to rewards than deterred by adverse consequences, why they are sensitive to peer influence, and why rational decision-making is still a work-in-progress during adolescence.

In light of these developmental vulnerabilities of adolescence, how could we design better schools for teenagers? The answer begins with factors outside of school. Feelings of safety and strong adult relationships are critical for learning. Indeed, adolescents in homes that feel safe have stronger executive functioning abilities. Using a parenting style (or teaching style) that both sets high expectations of children and provides large amounts of emotional responsiveness and love benefits students’ executive functioning greatly, and thus also their performance in school. Similarly, modeling adult relationships (e.g., between two parents) where conflicts can be resolved using calm and honest communication can offer these same benefits.

Exceptional teachers can buffer against the effects of unstable relationships at home, but there is no substitute for good parenting. To help parents employ an ideal parenting style and model a healthy conflict resolution style, schools should provide night classes to parents to help them learn to create more stable relationships at home. A complementary change would be for high schools to require social-emotional learning initiatives that include a sequenced progression through skills, active application of skills, and a focus on a few critical social skills (e.g., empathy). These programs have been linked to students doing better in school and enjoying it more.

Age fourteen is the peak onset of mental health disorders. High schools should be designed to help navigate the mental health challenges that arise during adolescence. For example, while fewer than 20% of teenagers spend more than 20 minutes a day in physical activity, exercise has been linked to cognitive skill, academic performance, and cerebrovascular density in key brain areas. Most importantly, exercise is about as helpful as antidepressants in treating depression. Medina argues that a gym should be the center piece of a school and sitting time should be replaced with walking time.

Starting school later in the morning to align with the natural shift in sleep patterns that occur during adolescence could help improve mental health and academic performance, and actually save districts money in the long run. Electronic and social media use, and especially the stimulation of electronic multi-tasking, may be contributing to high rates of anxiety in adolescence. Mindfulness exercise can be an antidote, helping to regulate emotions and mood, improve focus, and reduce pain. Medina calls for the integration of mindfulness practices into schools and the creation of mindfulness rooms.

As exemplified throughout this book, Medina makes an argument likely to resonate with Learning and the Brain readers—cognitive neuroscience and education typically are studied separately from one another, but to support adolescents’ success and development, we need to consider multiple forms of development together. Indeed the neuropsychologically derived principles that Medina suggests are likely to improve adolescents’ learning and well-being. Parents, teachers, and school administrators would do well to head his advice.

Medina, J. (2018). Attack of the Teenage Brain!: Understanding and Supporting the Weird and Wonderful Adolescent Learner. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.