Executive Function Treatment

Accelerating maturation of learning skills related to executive functioning

Executive function disorder is a difficulty in high-level thinking — organizing and sequencing tasks, multi-tasking, managing time, planning, problem solving, efficient internal dialog.  These are skills that are learned over time.

Fast ForWord For Executive Function

For children with auditory processing and working memory difficulties, the development of executive functioning is delayed, as concentration is diverted by basic tasks such as listening comprehension and reading decoding. As long as these tasks are not automatic, the overloaded mind is not fully free to practice and master executive functioning skills.

And so, where there are language processing delays — auditory processing disorder symptoms here — we recommend Fast ForWord because those delays impact all aspects of learning, and while it’s not simple, it’s also not that hard to improve language processing through adaptive exercise.

And if you can improve language processing  — a pivotal and absolutely vital skill — then all kinds of other skills can then develop more normally.  Therefore Fast ForWord is an executive function treatment that builds learning efficiency, creating a foundation for the development of self talk, which regulates behavior and executive function.

How Fast ForWord Helps

Fast ForWord is used to help executive function deficits because it:

1. Builds learning efficiency to free up capacity for higher level executive function, and

2. Exercises specific executive functioning skills, targeting working memory, selective attention, sequencing and reasoning.

Executive functioning is a practiced higher level skill. It will only start developing once fundamental learning efficiencies are mastered. Our software automates a range of functions, like listening and paying attention, that distract many children and require conscious effort and concentration. By removing these distractions from a child’s conscious mind, our program frees up space to observe and think — this leads to improved executive functioning.

Our executive function treatment adds to these gains by also exercising the specific cognitive skills — particularly working memory — that define executive function skills.

Recognizing An Executive Function Disorder?

Children and teens who have executive function disorder frequently struggle with:

• planning a project
• telling or writing a story
• memorizing and retrieving information
• generating ideas
• retaining information while using it to complete a task

Many bright children are able to meet expectations early on using inefficient and compromised learning skills. It is when these inefficiencies impede development of higher level thinking that “executive function” and other diagnoses start to emerge.

If any of this discussion resonates with you, contact us. We might be able to help.