Imagine your brain is an orchestra, comprising different musicians playing their instruments. Your orchestra is led by a conductor who interprets the composer’s score, sets the tempo, and guides the musicians to produce a complex symphony.
“Executive Function” is like your brain’s orchestra conductor, which helps it perform and prioritize tasks, filter distractions, and adapt to new situations with ease.
Executive Function consists of three main components –
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Working memory: The ability to recall and manipulate information over short periods. Use cases range from simple to highly complex – working memory can be used to perform basic tasks, such as remembering a phone number or credit card number, or even to solve a complex guesstimate without using pen and paper.
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Inhibitory control – the ability to stay focused amidst distractions and resist impulsive behaviour. This skill ensures that our brain’s attention is directed only towards what is truly relevant for achieving a stated plan. E.g., avoiding phone notifications while performing mentally strenuous tasks.
- Cognitive flexibility – the ability to adjust our plans to changing situations. This competence enables our brain to adjust its response, in the face of new information or circumstances. If this skill is under-developed, one could get stuck in a rut when faced with complex challenges.
Why is Executive Function important?
Strong executive function leads to successful self-regulation - the ability to proactively set plans, draw upon the right skills at the right time, manage one’s responses to stressful situations, and filter out distractions. In children, these underlying capabilities are highly predictive of future academic and career success, while also helping them grow into functional adults who can self-regulate emotions, tolerate setbacks, and bounce back from adversity.
What is Executive Function and how does it work?