1. Executive Skills A Practical Guide
The 1st Southern Tagalog Symposium on Developmental Disabilities

2. Executive Skills Conductor of an orchestra Channel selector of TV
Chairman of the Board

3. Role of Executive Skills
Meet challenges
Accomplish goals
Help decide which tasks to pay attention to, to perform
Organize behavior to delay gratification
SIMPLY: TO REGULATE BEHAVIOR

4. Role of Executive Skills
Thinking skills to achieve goals and problem solve
Planning
Organization
Time management
Working memory
Metacognition
Guiding skills to modify behavior
Response inhibition
Self-regulation of affect
Task initiation
Flexibilty
Goal directed persistence

5. Role of Executive Thinking Skills
Select and achieve goals
Develop problem solutions

6. Role of Executive Thinking Skills
Planning
- the ability to create a roadmap to reach a goal or complete a task
- deciding what is important to focus on (saliency determination)

7. Role of Executive Thinking Skills
Organization
The ability to arrange or place things according to a system

8. Role of Executive Thinking Skills
Time management
The capacity to estimate:
How much time you have
How to allocate the time you have
How to stay with in time limits and meet deadlines
Instilling that a
Sense of time
Is important!

9. Role of Executive Thinking Skills
Working memory
Ability to hold information in the mind while performing complex tasks
Ability to apply previous learning to the lesson at hand for problem solving

10. Role of Executive Thinking Skills
Modifies your behavior to be able to meet the goals
Metacognition
The ability observe yourself in a situation
Self-monitoring

11. Role of Executive Guiding Skills
Response inhibition
Capacity to think before you act
Evaluating how a behavior may impact a situation

12. Role of Executive Guiding Skills
Self-regulation of affect
The ability to manage emotions in order to achieve goals, complete tasks, control or direct the behavior

13. Role of Executive Guiding Skills
Task initiation
The ability to start a task with out undue procrastination

14. Role of Executive Guiding Skills
Flexibility
The ability to revise in the face of obstacles, new information, mistakes
Being adaptable to changing conditions

15. Role of Executive Guiding Skills
Goal-directed persistence
Capacity to follow through to the completion of a goal and not to be put off by competing interests and other demands

16. Role of Executive Thinking and Guiding Skills
Not so much for day-to-day habits and routines
To help you face new challenges and resolve to pursue a goal

17. Developmental Tasks Requiring Executive Skills
Preschool
Running simple errands (get your shoes from the room)
Pack away things
Perform simple chores and self-help tasks with reminders
Inhibit behaviors: don’t touch hot stove, don’t run into the street, don’t grab, hit, push, etc

18. Developmental Tasks Requiring Executive Skills
Kindergarten - grade 2
Run errands with 2-3 steps directions
Tidy room
Simple chores
Deciding how to spend money
Inhibiting behaviors - follow safety rules, keep hands to self

19. School Related Expectations Requiring Executive Skills
Grades 1 - 3
Greater demand for sustained concentration
Need for enhanced filtering of distractions
Initial stress on reflection, planning and self-monitoring
Call for persistence and task completion
Stress on consistency control

20. School Related Expectations Requiring Executive Skills
Grades 4 - 7
Less predictable information flow
Explosion of decontextualized details
Growing social distractions
Need for attention on low interest topics
Stress on extended mental effort
Planning and self-regulation is are often demanded

21. School Related Expectations Requiring Executive Skills
High school
Multiple degrees of saliency in information
Heightened attention, memory, language interactions
Growing affective distraction
Stress on previewing, pacing and self-monitoring
Flexibility of bottom-up/top-down processing

22. Keys:
PARTNERSHIP +
COLLABORATION
OPTIMISM =
Successful
Learning

23. Reference
Dawson P. and Guare R., (2004) Executive Skills in Children and Adolescents, A Practical Guide to Assessment and Intervention, The Guilford Press, New York, NY

24. Thank You!