Essentials of Executive Functions Assessment

"Executive Function" is a term used to describe a set of mental processes that helps us connect past experience with present action and which is important for successful adaptation and performance in real-life situations. We use executive function when we perform such activities as planning, organizing, strategizing and paying attention to and remembering details. Executive functions also enable people to inhibit inappropriate behaviors.Executive function deficits are associated with a number of psychiatric and developmental disorders, including obsessive-compulsive disorder, Tourette's syndrome, depression, schizophrenia, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and autism. Executive function deficits also appear to play a role in antisocial behavior. Chronic heavy users of drugs and alcohol show impairments on tests of executive function. Problems with executive function can be seen at any age but tend to be increasingly apparent as children move through the early elementary grades.Packaged in the user-friendly Essentials series style and format, this book allows "one-stop shopping" for anyone who wants to learn how to interpret, administer, and score popular assessments of executive function, which include the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), the Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System (D-KEFS), the NEPSY, the Behavioural Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome (BADS), the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Functions (BRIEF, BRIEF-2, BRIEF SR) and the Frontal Systems Behavior Scale (FrSBE). The author also provides more general techniques that can be used to interpret aspects of executive functions using tests not specifically designed as measures of executive function.