The Time to Act is NOW: Promoting Executive Function Skills

What stands in the way of and what promotes learning? Those are crucial questions we must address NOW, in the post-pandemic world.

According to those with boots on the ground—educational leaders within K-12 schools nationwide—the top barrier in the 2023-2024 school years was students’ lack of focus and inattention to learning. In this National Center for Education Statistic’s (NCES) May School Pulse Panel, 75 percent reported that this had a moderate to severe impact, with 26 saying the impact was severe.¹ 

In addition to a lack of focus, school leaders rated the following as having a moderate to severe impact:

• Students being academically unprepared for school (e.g., not doing homework, not bringing necessary supplies) (61%)

• Student tardiness (58%)

• Students being disruptive in the classroom (e.g., calling out, talking to others during instruction, getting out of seat when not allowed, leaving classroom) (57%)

• Students being disruptive outside the classroom (e.g., yelling or running in the hallways, lunchroom) (57%)

Although these barriers may seem pretty disparate, they’re all related in the brain because they all involve executive function skills.

Just What Are Executive Function Skills?

I have devoted the past 25 years to studying, writing and speaking about EF skills and that’s a question that I often ask audiences when I speak.

My favorite answer of all time is, “Executive function! That sounds like an executive in a pin stripe suit bossing you around in your head.” I also love what a teenager told me, “They are functions of the brain that help you act like an executive.” Neither are that far off and they’re also right in that the scientific language may be a bit off-putting.

But the importance of these skills is anything but off-putting—it’s central to our functioning. The Harvard Center on the Developing Child writes that “having executive functions of the brain is like having an air traffic control system at a busy airport to manage the arrivals and departures of dozens of planes on multiple runways.”² Jennifer Silvers of UCLA uses the analogy of an orchestra conductor³ because we use these “top-down neurocognitive processes”⁴ to manage and coordinate our emotions, thoughts, and behavior to achieve goals,⁵ not unlike a conductor directing individual players in the orchestra to work together in order to create a symphony.

Philip David Zelazo of the University of Minnesota, says that executive function skills are best understood as a “broad umbrella concept,” because they’re defined behaviorally in terms of what people do. He continues:⁶

Executive function skills provide a foundation for learning deliberately and for adapting to life’s challenges. Whenever we want to do something deliberately—we want to pursue a goal—we need to rely on these attention regulation skills.

What’s Under the “Umbrella”? The Four Components of Foundational Executive Function Skills

If I continue with Zelazo’s analogy, the umbrella itself would be focus, because executive function skills are attention-regulation skills.⁷ When we’re trying to achieve a goal or solve a problem, we need to focus attention on it, just as when we’re out in a storm, the umbrella has to be open to keep us dry. Under the umbrella are four component skills: cognitive flexibility, working memory, inhibitory control, and reflection. These skills enable us to:

• Think flexibly: Consider alternative perspectives and think flexibly in response to changing circumstances (cognitive flexibility)

• Use what we know: Keep information in mind so it can be used (working memory)

• Use self-control: Resist automatic and impulsive behaviors (inhibitory control) so we can engage in goal-directed reasoning and problem solving and persist in reaching goals⁸

• Reflect: Notice challenges, pause, step back, consider options, and put things into context before responding (reflection).⁹ While this skill is not usually included as a foundational executive function skill because it takes place in the default network of the brain, not the cognitive control network where the other three skills are centered, the use of these EF skills depends on reflection as we monitor and think about the goals we want to achieve. For this reason, I think it is essential to include it under the umbrella of EF skills.

Given our scientific understanding of these skills, you can understand why I say the barriers to learning named by educational leaders on the NCES pulse survey are EF skills:

• Being focused and attentive are the essence of EF skills

• Being prepared for school by doing homework, bringing necessary supplies, and being on time involve self-control 

• So does managing yourself inside and outside of the classroom

Life and Learning Skills

Executive function skills—in and of themselves—go far beyond being able to manage oneself in a classroom. Consider thinking flexibility, as the world changes, so must we; consider reflecting on our life’s goals as well.

Importantly, these foundational skills become the cognitive building blocks for Life and Learning Skills. From years of conducting and reviewing research, I see five such skills as essential: 1) setting goals, 2) perspective taking 3) communicating and collaborating, 4) problem solving (including creative thinking and critical thinking), and 5) taking on challenges.¹⁰ I will be writing a lot about these skills in the future.

Life and Learning Skills are similar to 21^st Century Skills and Durable Skills with the caveat that I begin from brain studies and tie the skills I think are essential to foundational executive functions of the brain.

Why Are Executive Function SO Important?

These skills are at the core of intentional learning. Countless individual studies show EF skills help children—and adults—succeed now and in the future. Rather than looking at individual studies to make this point, however, I turn to syntheses of EF intervention research.

Among the best are two review articles by Adele Diamond and Daphne Ling of the University of British Columbia. In the first of these articles, they only included studies that….¹¹

• Were published in a peer-reviewed journal in English.

• Showed causal effects. Causality is a big deliverable. For example, if a study simply compares two groups of students—let’s say, those who were in orchestras and those who weren’t—and concludes that students in orchestras have better executive function skills, that’s a correlational finding, not a causal one. You wouldn’t know from this finding whether the orchestra students in this study just happened to have more “get-up-and-go” (to quote neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga)¹² or whether something about being in orchestra actually improved their cognitive skills.

• Included a comparison or control group. To show causal effects, you need to show that an intervention creates an improvement over time by presenting evidence that a comparable population that at best was randomly assigned to a group without the intervention does not change.¹³

• Examined longer-term effects—that is, the improvement lasts for a measurable amount of time and not just immediately after (e.g., an hour after the intervention).

• Demonstrated far transfer—that is, shows effects beyond improvements on the immediate task. Diamond and Ling write: “We were interested in…. improvement in a basic cognitive ability that generalized at least to similar tasks.”¹⁴

They found 84 interventions meeting these criteria in 2016, and in 2020 they included 179 studies from 193 papers.¹⁵ Here—in their words—is a summary of the findings:

EFs are predictive of achievement, health, wealth, and quality of life throughout life, often more so than IQ or socioeconomic status. They are more critical for school readiness than IQ or entry-level reading or math. They are predictive of success throughout the school years from preschool through university (often more so than IQ).

The importance of strong EFs does not stop in childhood. There is abundant evidence that EFs are crucial for success in getting and keeping a job as well as career advancement, making and keeping friends, marital harmony, staying out of jail and resisting substance abuse. Adults with better EFs also report they are happier and have a better quality of life.¹⁶

Early Childhood and Adolescence Are Prime Times for the Development of EF Skills

Children aren’t born with executive function skills, but they are born with the capacity to learn them with practice. The Harvard Center on the Developing Child says this well: genes provide blueprints, but the environments children are in leave lasting signatures on those blueprints.¹⁷

Executive function skills grow rapidly in the early childhood years and in the adolescent years. The Harvard Center points out that the early development of EF skills corresponds to the development of the prefrontal cortex. In the early years, this development is formative, “as relevant circuits emerge, mature, and forge critical interconnections.”

In adolescence and early adulthood, these “circuits are then refined and made more efficient.”¹⁸ Two major changes in the brain during the adolescent years explain why adolescence is such a prime time for the development of these skills. First, the prefrontal regions—regions central to executive function—develop significantly. Second, there’s improved connectivity within and between the outer cortical regions (areas linked to cognitive control) and inner cortical regions (areas linked to emotional responses, rewards, and learning).¹⁹

Executive function skills do improve rapidly in adolescence, and on emotionally “sunny” days, according to Jennifer Silvers of UCLA, adolescents can use these skills as well as adults or even outperform them. But on emotionally “stormy” days, it can be a different story. Silvers compares the developing connections between the prefrontal and subcortical regions to newly paved roads. When a storm of strong emotion comes in, the cement can get wet and things can get messy.

Notice that I use the word “can.” In fact, adolescence is a critical time for gaining these skills, which can buffer adolescents against difficulties throughout their lives.²⁰

What EF Skills Are NOT

As I said above, I speak to many different groups about EF skills and I often ask people if they’ve heard about them. In fact, many haven’t.

If they have heard about them, I ask them what EF skills are. Here are the most common confusions.

To begin, EF skills are not noncognitive or soft skills. That’s probably said because they differ from learning academic content, like English or math or science. EF skills are mostly centered in the cognitive control parts of the brain, including the prefrontal cortex. It’s better to think of them as neurocognitive skills that pull together our cognitive, social, and emotional capacities to achieve goals.

Second, executive function skills are not just self-regulation skills (managing yourself in school) or study skills (remember to do your homework and create tabs on your notebook). That’s why I think it’s important that we understand that the barriers that educational leaders list in the NCES pulse survey constitute only part of what EF skills are. In a 2016 report for the Department of Education, Zelazo, Clancy Blair of New York University, and Michael Willoughby of the Research Triangle Institute write:

Executive function (EF) skills are the attention-regulation skills that make it possible to sustain attention, keep goals and information in mind, refrain from responding immediately, resist distraction, tolerate frustration, consider the consequences of different behaviors, reflect on past experiences, and plan for the future.²¹

You can see that these skills are central to learning in school and learning in life. They do matter when we are trying to sit still and listen (sustaining attention, resisting distractions, tolerating frustration). They are also important study skills, but they underlie all intentional learning. For example, think about keeping goals and information in our minds, refraining from responding immediately, considering the consequences of different behaviors, reflecting on past experiences, and planning for the future.

Finally, these skills are not just for people who have executive function challenges, like ADHD or autism. As someone with family members with ADHD, I know how important these skills are for those in my family but they are also critically important for all of us.

If EF Skills Are So Essential, Why Aren’t We Doing More to Promote Them?

My first response to that question is that we must do more to promote them, but there’s been another reason for the lag between research and practice. Studies have also found that learning these skills in a lab or single setting don’t necessarily transfer to other activities—in other words, there’s been the challenge of far transfer.

Adele Diamond and Daphne Ling addressed this challenge directly in their comprehensive review of EF interventions—their 2016 review is titled: Conclusions about interventions, programs, and approaches for improving executive functions that appear justified and those that, despite much hype, do not.²²

For this reason, Phil Zelazo and I continue to review the research to identify where far transfer of EF skills does take place. On this basis, we propose that efforts to promote EF will be successful if they:²³

• Include opportunities for children and adults to engage in prospective and retrospective processing on the skills they are gaining. Prospective reflection is important because it interrupts automatic processing, allowing for consideration of goals and top-down control in light of them. Retrospective reflection on what has been learned is also important because it can help individuals understand when and how to apply their trained skills in new situations. The addition of a metacognitive component to EF training has been shown to produce far transfer.²⁴

• Are given opportunities to practice the skills in different places. Studies find that skills practiced in just one setting are harder to generalize.²⁵ To promote far transfer, EF skills need to be practiced (and practice is key) in a variety of settings, including real-world settings.²⁶

• Are learned in the context of Life and Learning Skills, Children need to see the connections between the core EF skills (like inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility) and Life and Learning Skills, like problem-solving and taking on challenges.

A Word About Learning EF Skills

The words used in NCES pulse survey paint a picture of education where the teacher is the dispenser of knowledge and students are absorbing that knowledge by being attentive, focusing and not being disruptive (calling out, talking to others during instruction, getting out of their seats when not allowed, leaving the classroom).

It is important to be very clear that we need to picture different a kind of learning environment to promote EF skills. These skills are best learned when children and adolescents are learning through varied, meaningful and relevant experiences, where they have opportunities to set goals for themselves, to challenge themselves, and to practice and reflect on the skills they are learning. In other words, children are truly engaged in learning. As Diamond and Ling have found, activities that promote executive function skills “provide, joy, reduce feelings of stress and loneliness, and inspire self-confidence and pride.”²⁷

The Time to Act is Now

Now that we know what EF skills are, why they are so critically important, and how to promote them, we must act.

Why now?

Because promoting these skills will not only help children learn content, but will also help reduce the barriers to learning that the NCES pulse survey identified—challenges that have been magnified by the pandemic. In fact, in that survey, educators agree or strongly agree that the pandemic continues to affect the behavioral (80%) and social-emotional (83%) development of students.²⁸

Parents have come to similar conclusions. In a longitudinal, population-based study of close to 3000 children, parents and teachers in the state of Massachusetts by researchers at Harvard University, parents reported that their children’s externalizing and internalizing and dysregulated behaviors increased after the pandemic shutdown, while children’s adaptive behaviors declined.²⁹ This mean that parents are seeing their children act out more, are more aggressive or more withdrawn, and have difficulties managing their feelings and behavior.

And this isn’t just perception. The Harvard team is performing analyses of children’s executive function skills—measured behaviorally³⁰ —and show that executive function skills declined considerably during the pandemic and have not rebounded two years later. 

Importantly, these are the skills that employers continue to seek in new hires to the workforce. In its annual survey, year after year, The National Association of Colleges and Employers finds that employers are less likely to look at the grade point averages of potential hires. Instead, they are more likely to seek people with skills like the ability to work in teams, problem-solve, communicate and think analytically.³¹

There’s typically a lag between research (what we know) and action (what we do). We must interrupt this lag and act NOW to help children learn and thrive and to keep the fire for learning burning in their eyes.

Children, their parents, and their teachers can’t wait!

1. Institute of Educational Sciences, National Center for Educational Statistics, “School Pulse Panel: Responses to the pandemic and efforts toward recovery,” https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/spp/.

2. National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, “Building the Brain’s ‘Air Traffic Control’ System: How Early Experiences Shape the Development of Executive Function” (Working Paper No. 11, Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, February 2011), 1, https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/building-the-brains-air-traffic-control-system-how-early-experiences-shape-the-development-of-executive-function/.

3. Jennifer Silvers, interview by Ellen Galinsky, May 5, 2017.

4. Philip David Zelazo and Stephanie M. Carlson, “Hot and Cool Executive Function in Childhood and Adolescence: Development and Plasticity,” Child Development Perspectives 6, no. 4 (December 2012): 354–360, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1750-8606.2012.00246.x.

5. Akira Miyake et al., “The Unity and Diversity of Executive Functions and Their Contributions to Complex ‘Frontal Lobe’ Tasks: A Latent Variable Analysis,” Cognitive Psychology 41, no. 1 (August 2000): 49–100, https://doi.org/10.1006/cogp.1999.0734.

6. Philip David Zelazo, interview by Ellen Galinsky, December 8, 2008.

7. Ellen Galinsky et al., “Civic Science for Public Use: Mind in the Making and Vroom,” Child Development 88 (July 2017): 1410, https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12892.

8. Ibid.; Stephanie M. Carlson, Philip David Zelazo, and Susan Faja, “Executive Function,” in The Oxford Handbook of Developmental Psychology, vol. 1, Body and mind, ed. Philip David Zelazo (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 706–743; Susan E. Gathercole et al., “Working Memory Skills and Educational Attainment: Evidence from National Curriculum Assessments at 7 and 14 Years of Age,” Applied Cognitive Psychology 18, no. 1 (2004): 1–16, https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.934; Megan M. McClelland et al., “Self-Regulation: The Integration of Cognition and Emotion,” in Handbook of Life-Span Human Development: Cognition, Biology and Methods, ed. Willis F. Overton and Richard Lerner (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2010), 1:509–553; M. Rosario Rueda et al., “Training, Maturation, and Genetic Influences on the Development of Executive Attention,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102, no. 41 (October 2005): 14931–14936.

9. Philip David Zelazo, Clancy B. Blair, and Michael T. Willoughby, Executive Function: Implications for Education, NCER 2017–2000 (Washington, DC: National Center for Education Research, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, 2016), 6.

10. Ellen Galinsky, The Breakthrough Years: A New Scientific Framework for Raising Thriving Teens (New York: Flatiron Press, 2024).

11. Adele Diamond and Daphne S. Ling, “Conclusions About Interventions, Programs, and Approaches for Improving Executive Functions That Appear Justified and Those That, Despite Much Hype, Do Not,” Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience 18 (April 2016): 35, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2015.11.005.

12. Michael Gazzaniga, interview by Ellen Galinsky, April 21, 2009.

13. Diamond and Ling, “Conclusions About Interventions, Programs, and Approaches.”

14. Ibid., 35.

15. Adele Diamond and Daphne S. Ling, “Review of the Evidence on, and Fundamental Questions About, Efforts to Improve Executive Functions, Including Working Memory,” in Cognitive and Working Memory Training: Perspectives from Psychology, Neuroscience, and Human Development, eds. Jared M. Novick et al. (Oxford Scholarship online, 2020), 1–572, https: //doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199974467.001.0001.

16. Adele Diamond and Daphne S. Ling, “Conclusions About Interventions, Programs, and Approaches for Improving Executive Functions That Appear Justified and Those That, Despite Much Hype, Do Not,” Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience 18 (April 2016): 35, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2015.11.005.

17. National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, “Building the Brain’s ‘Air Traffic Control’ System: How Early Experiences Shape the Development of Executive Function” (Working Paper No. 11, Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, February 2011), https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/building-the-brains-air-traffic-control-system-how-early-experiences-shape-the-development-of-executive-function/.

18. Ibid., 4.

19. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, The Promise of Adolescence: Realizing Opportunity for All Youth (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2019), https://doi.org/10.17226/25388.

20. Jennifer Silvers, interview by Ellen Galinsky, May 5, 2017.

21. Implications for Education, NCER 2017–2000 (Washington, DC: National Center for Education Research, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, 2016), 6.Philip David Zelazo, Clancy B. Blair, and Michael T. Willoughby, Executive Function:

22. Adele Diamond, and Daphne S. Ling, “Conclusions about interventions, programs, and approaches for improving executive functions that appear justified and those that, despite much hype, do not.” Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience 18 (2016): 34-48, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2015.11.005.

23. Philip David Zelazo, Destany Calma-Birling, and Ellen Galinsky, “Fostering Executive-Function Skills and Promoting Far Transfer to Real-World Outcomes: The Importance of Life Skills and Civic Science,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 33 no. 2 (2024): 121- 127, https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214241229664.

24. Stacey D. Espinet, Jacon E. Anderson, and Philip David Zelazo, “Reflection training improves executive function in preschool-age children: Behavioral and neural effects,” Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience 4 (2013): 3-15, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2012.11.009; Joan Paul Pozuelos et al., “Metacognitive scaffolding boosts cognitive and neural benefits following executive attention training in children,” Developmental Science 2 (2019): 22:e12756,  https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12756.

25. Steven M. Smith, “Enhancement of recall using multiple environmental contexts during learning,” Memory and Cognition 10, no. 5 (1982): 405-412, https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197642.

26. Elena Bodrova and Deborah Leong, Tools of the Mind: The Vygotskian approach to early childhood education (New York: Merrill/Prentice Hall, 2^nd Edition, 2007).

27. Diamond and Ling, “Review of the Evidence,” 501.

28. Institute of Educational Sciences, National Center for Educational Statistics, “School Pulse Panel: Responses to the pandemic and efforts toward recovery: Interactive Results, May 2024,” https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/spp/results.asp#student-behavior-may24-chart-1.

29. Emily C. Hanno et al, “Changes in children's behavioral health and family well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics 43 no. 3 (2022): 168-175.

30. Lily S. Fritz et al, Developmental Trajectories of Children’s Behavioral Health and Family Well-Being Prior To and Through the COVID-19 Pandemic (Paper, 2023 Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) Biennial Meeting, 2023).

31. Kevin Gray, “As Their Focus on GPA Fades, Employers Seek Key Skills on College Grads’ Resumes,” Posted November 15, 2022, https://ebiztest.naceweb.org/talent-acquisition/candidate-selection/as-their-focus-on-gpa-fades-employers-seek-key-skills-on-college-grads-resumes/.