1. Self-awareness: Simply put, this is self-directed attention.2. Inhibition: Also known as self-restraint.3. Non-Verbal Working Memory: The ability to hold things in your mind. Essentially, visual imagery — how well you can picture things mentally.4. Verbal Working Memory: Self-speech, or internal speech. Most people think of this as their “inner monologue.”5. Emotional Self-Regulation: The ability to take the previous four executive functions and use them to manipulate your own emotional state. This means learning to use words, images, and your own self-awareness to process and alter how we feel about things.6. Self-motivation: How well you can motivate yourself to complete a task when there is no immediate external consequence.7. Planning and Problem Solving: Experts sometimes like to think of this as “self-play” — how we play with information in our minds to come up with new ways of doing something. By taking things apart and recombining them in different ways, we’re planning solutions to our problems. Anyone who exhibits the classic symptoms of ADHD will have difficulty with all or most of these seven executive functions.
This groundbreaking book offers a comprehensive theory of executive functioning (EF) with important clinical implications. Synthesizing cutting-edge neuropsychological and evolutionary research, Russell A. Barkley presents a model of EF that is rooted in meaningful activities of daily life. He describes how abilities such as emotion regulation, self-motivation, planning, and working memory enable people to pursue both personal and collective goals that are critical to survival. Key stages of EF development are identified and the far-reaching individual and social costs of EF deficits detailed. Barkley explains specific ways that his model may support much-needed advances in assessment and treatment.
See also Barkley’s empirically based, ecologically valid assessment tools: Barkley Deficits in Executive Functioning Scale (BDEFS for Adults) and Barkley Deficits in Executive Functioning Scale–Children and Adolescents (BDEFS-CA).
