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Executive Functioning

Mar 30, 2010 in Speech Therapy

Executive functioning is a high level thinking skill that controls and regulates other thinking and behaviour skills.

This includes the ability to initiate and cease actions, attending to a task in spite of distractions, monitor behaviour, adapt or change behaviour when needed, plan how to do tasks, use strategies to achieve success, learn from mistakes, multi-task, anticipate outcomes and think abstractly.

Executive functioning is crucial for coping with real life. We need to be able to assess situations, understand why a situation is as it appears, work out how to handle it, adapt and make alternative plans as situations change and deal with the unexpected. We also learn to inhibit inappropriate behaviour and control impulses such as saying or doing things that could cause trouble or misunderstanding. We often need to be able to do a number of things at the same time, automatically and efficiently.

If executive functioning is not working well there are implications for communication and socialising.

Executive functioning normally develops over the entire length of the childhood years.

Source: www.speechtherapyresource.com

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Auditory Memory

Mar 30, 2010 in Auditory Memory, Speech Therapy

Auditory memory is the ability to remember what has been heard, including sounds, words and sentences. Some children are not able to make sense of all the sounds they are hearing in their environment, or to remember exactly what a particular sound is like, or to remember a series of sounds.

If a child doesn’t have a functional auditory memory, in the early stages of language development it will be difficult for them to:

  • Speak clearly
  • Learn to use sentence structure correctly
  • Follow instructions
  • Remember nursery rhymes and stories
  • Stay focused whilst listening

When a child is older, poor auditory memory will make it difficult for them to:

  • Follow complex instructions
  • Hear sounds joining together to make words, or to blend and segment words
  • Remember sequences of ideas
  • Retell stories, or remember songs and poems
  • Use and understand appropriate prosody (tune, tone, etc) in their voice
  • Focus on verbal information
  • Attend to one sound (eg speech) while there is background noise
  • Read and comprehend

Source: www.speechtherapyresource.net

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