I’d first like to start off by talking about executive functioning. We know that executive functioning impacts children with autism in all kinds of ways, particularly in reading comprehension. We also know though it’s not specific to children with autism, so children with ADHD struggle with executive functioning and children with traumatic brain injury suffer with delays in that area. When we talk about reading however, executive functioning really comes into mind, because what we know about good readers is — what do they do? They check themselves. They go, “Oh, did I understand that?
That kind of repair and reflection is part of executive functioning and that’s very difficult for them. Another part of executive functioning is flexibility. And so the ability of being able to attack something flexibly is very difficult. So somebody might be reading, and it may go off in a different way and it throws them something within a reading passage may remind them — may have “pounce” on it — and remind them of The Lion King. And so then they’ve gone to The Lion King and they have difficulty bringing themselves back. As you can see as I’m going through, executive functioning is a really broad term that encompasses a lot of things. In fact people call it the CEO of the brain. Other things it involves are the working memory. If I have to hold things in my memory — so for instance if I said, “say ‘horse, chicken, dog,’” and then, “horse, chicken, dog.”
That’s no problem. But then if I say, “Okay, say those three words in alphabetical order,” I have to hold that in my memory and then be able to put “chicken, dog, horse,” in the right order. So that ability to hold something in the short-term memory is sometimes difficult for children with autism, although if they’ve put it in their memory — their long-term memory is wonderful, and they are the proverbial elephant. They just never forget. Many times those kinds of things — being able to follow through on a project — which really involves, you know, homework, science projects, all of those kinds of things — in what order — how do I get started? All of those things really involve executive functioning issues.
