Executive Function and Working Memory: How do they affect learning?
- Chantra
- Jan 7, 2022
- 4 min read
In 1848, Phineas Gage, a 25-year old foreman, was preparing a railroad bed, when an iron rod pierced his skull. This brain injury drastically altered his personality. He suffered loss of social inhibitions and struggled to hold onto his jobs. This case had a tremendous impact on neurology, as the changes in his behavior gave rise to theories about localization of brain function. Today, it is widely held that the prefrontal cortex, where Gage was injured, plays a vital role in the executive functioning of a person.
What are Executive Function and Working Memory?
Executive function is a mental process that enables us to do many crucial things: focus attention, plan action, consider consequences, and reflect on the past. It is also a process that allows us to refrain from responding immediately, resist distractions, and tolerate frustrations. Working memory is an important part of executive function. It is memory that allows us to hold information in mind that will guide subsequent behavior. For many of us, working memory can be fragile. A task we knew we had to do can disappear from our minds within seconds. Many call this a “senior moment,” and laugh it off. But is that what it is?
Adam Gazzaley is Professor of Neurology, Physiology and Psychiatry at University California in San Francisco and Co-founder of Neuroscape, a neuroscience center engaged in scientific research. He conducted experiments to discover the various factors that affect the integrity of working memory. He concluded that there are two factors that compromise working memory: distraction and interruption. A distraction refers to an external stimulus that is irrelevant to a goal. For example, when reading this blog, you may hear the sound of a snowplow that momentarily diverts your attention. Since the snowplow is irrelevant to your goal of reading this blog, it serves as a distraction. An interruption, however, forces us momentarily to abandon a task, respond to the external stimulus, then return to the initial task. If a Municipal Worker were to knock on the door to ask you to sign a bill for the snowplowing while you were reading this blog, that knock becomes an interruption. Gazzale discovered that working memory’s accuracy is more warped by interruption, especially in older adults.
What are the implications for education?
School-aged children face multiple interruptions every day. These interruptions are a strain on attention and working memory. It becomes crucial, then, that they develop their executive function skills that will allow them to prioritize, organize, and select appropriate courses of action.
It is important to understand that the prefrontal cortex of a human being does not fully develop until she is in her early 20’s. A school-age child’s prefrontal cortex is not fully formed; consequently, her executive function skills are not yet fully developed. While this finding allows adults to understand the reasons behind the unpredictable patterns of a teenager, it should also be a reminder that this is the time for direction and guidance. Executive function skills can be developed.
How do we help students develop executive function skills?
To answer this complex question, we must return to some of the key functions of Executive Function: planning, cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control. Twenty years in the classroom have shown me that one of the most powerful ways to develop a student’s ability to plan is by building on writing skills. In order to write effectively, a central argument needs to be established, and subsequent points need to be made to support the argument. The developing points should build on one another. Planning for an essay requires the same skills as planning for a political debate, a business presentation or a class lesson. Pre-writing – and then using what was written during this important stage – becomes a crucial process in both the final product of the writing as well as executive function development.
Cognitive flexibility allows a child to see things from different perspectives. When problem solving in math, the student should be encouraged to explore different techniques used in answering, and understanding which technique should be used in each situation. When writing a Humanities paper, students should be challenged to look at a situation from multiple perspectives.
The third part of Executive Function is inhibitory control. It is one of the most difficult things to teach. Walter Mischel’s Stanford University “Marshmallow Test” administered in the early 1960’s suggests that a child’s ability to delay gratification was connected to higher scores on standardized multiple-choice tests. Mischel and his graduate students gave nursery school aged children the choice between one reward (such as marshmallow or pretzel) they could eat immediately or a larger reward if they could wait alone up to 20 minutes. Years later, these children were followed again, and Mischel discovered that those who waited fared better in life, as defined by SAT scores and body mass index. In an interview with Jacoba Urist in 2012, Mischel stated that “the studies [were] about achievement situations and what influences a child to make his or her choice.” Though there are some criticisms about the Marshmallow Test, one thing is clear: encouraging a child to control his inhibitions allows him to think things through and gives him time to make appropriate choices.
In the end, perhaps it is not the content of the subjects we teach that is as meaningful as the underlying skills of language processing and executive functioning. Providing a child with a firm foundation in these skills allow him to one day make the most of his education, and, in so doing, make sense of his world.
References
Executive Function: Implications for Education
Philip Zelaso, Clancy Blair, Michael Willoughby
2016
What the Marshmallow Test Really Teaches about Self-Control
Jacoba Urist, September 2014
Exploring the Crossroads of Attention and Memory in the Aging Brain
Adam Gazzaley, 2012
Phineas Gage’s Brain Injury, Kendra Cherry
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