How to work executive functions?

Executive functions with complex activities that allow us to achieve the different goals we set for ourselves and adapt to the environment. These are essential skills in our day to day life.

Despite the complexity of these functions, they are used in many of the activities we carry out during the day, such as choosing what is the best way to reach our destination, remember a number that we have just consulted, plan and organize the order that We will continue to do the different tasks that we have pending or assess the best solution to possible setbacks that may arise.

We see how, in the same task or activity, we can require more than one function. In this way, it will be essential to train them all to achieve greater ease in their use and to be more effective. There are different ways to train them: we can do them individually, together with other people, or carry out cognitive or motor tasks, and even exercise them while we play and have fun.

In this article we will talk about What strategies and techniques can we use to work on and improve executive functions?

, which can be used in the educational context, in therapy sessions, as parenting strategies, etc.

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What are executive functions

Executive functions are complex psychological processes that we put into practice with the intention of reaching a goal. In this way, these functions they help us to adapt to the environment and live in a functional way, that is, being able to execute the different actions or tasks that allow us to achieve our objectives.

Given the complexity of these capacities, the period in which the greatest development occurs is from 6 to 8 years of age, with the maturation of some of them being able to be extended up to 25 years.

There are different types of executive functions, with different purposes, to adapt to the requirements of each task: planning, which consists of setting objectives, the procedure to achieve them and anticipating consequences; decision making, selecting one action among several; organizing, gathering and structuring information; flexibility, ability to adapt to change; monitoring, which is full attention to a task; and anticipation, based on foreseeing results and consequences.

Other useful executive functions are: response inhibition, voluntarily stopping a behavior, self-control; verbal and non-verbal working memory, a temporary store to be able to work with data; change, which allows attention to be moved to different variables of a stimulus; updating, which consists of adding new content to memory; and fluency, which is based on producing new information from what we have.

Thus, to achieve the same goal, we can or will need to use different executive functions to perform the task correctly. we see how some of these functions are linked and relate to each other; for example, the ability to monitor, which we have seen consists of focusing attention on a task in order to modify our action if necessary, is related to cognitive flexibility, which allows us to change our thoughts and adapt to the changes.

All these functions are very useful and essential for our day to day life. They allow us to make plans, make decisions, solve problems, reduce impulsivity, increase cognitive flexibility, maintain our attention... In short, carry out the different activities optimally.

For a better understanding, some more concrete examples would be: think about the best way to get to the place where I want to go, what transport is the most appropriate to arrive earlier or to be able to modify our behavior if we see that there is vague trains.

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How to work and develop our executive functions?

Executive functions, as it happens with many other abilities, depend in part on genetic factors of the subject, which means that each individual shows a predisposition to be more or less skilled in this regard, but we will always have the possibility of working on them.

Given the importance they have in our daily lives, in the possibility of allowing us to adapt to the different situations that we find ourselves in, It will be essential that we train them to be as functional as we can.

Next we will see some tasks that can be useful to train these skills. Some require material, others that are carried out in a group and with the possibility of adapting to different ages.

1. labyrinths

This task It consists of finding the path that allows you to get from the entrance to the exit, without encountering any obstacles.. In this activity, different functions will be worked on, such as planning the objective we want to achieve, decision-making to see which is the best path, anticipation to anticipate possible obstacles or the cognitive flexibility that will give us the possibility of changing our initial plan, the initially chosen path, in order to achieve the Exit.

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2. Find the differences between drawings

Another activity that can help us exercise executive functions is look for the different differences between two drawings. This task allows us to monitor attention by keeping it on a stimulus and fixing it on different parts of the drawings and from one drawing to another. It also gives us the possibility to practice cognitive inhibition, linked to not refocusing our attention on details of the drawing that we already we have verified and they are not different and the organization, if we want to follow a pattern that guides us to look for the differences in a more neat.

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3. Perform tasks that depend on a condition

In this case, the subject is given a task that must be solved given a premise or a restriction.. For example, you must find the answer to the problem using a certain procedure. In this way, planning is trained, to set the objective, the working memory that allows us to manipulate the information that we are using at that moment or fluency, which allows us to use the knowledge we already have together with the information they give us in order to find the solution.

4. Repeating letters and numbers

The task of repeating numbers and letters has no greater mystery than repeating a series of stimuli (letters or numbers) to mainly train working memory.

We can make some modifications to the activity to make it a bit more complex, such as asking the subject to repeat the sequence in reverse order, ordering it from highest to lowest or vice versa, to also exercise organization or require that you order letters and numbers to the time. In this way, if we propose to do the different alternatives, cognitive flexibility will also work, since it will have to adapt to the different changes in order to do the task well.

5. memory of images

This is another useful technique to train mainly working memory, but in this case visual memory, since the test will consist of showing an image that must later be remembered and identified. It is important that not much time elapses, it is believed that if we stop using the information, the working memory takes between 10 to 15 seconds to decrease the memory of it.

One way to make the activity more complex could be to increase the difficulty of the drawing or of the stimuli to remember. For example, raising the need to remember both the color and the number shown by each of the circles contained in the drawing.

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6. Playing gestures

Another way to train working memory, as well as other cognitive functions such as flexibility or inhibition, consists of asking people to reproduce gestures. They must remember the gesture, have the ability to perform new ones and inhibit those they have already learned.

We can make the activity more complex if we require it to remember and reproduce a sequence of actions.

7. alternate writing

The subject is asked to write a series of words but alternating lowercase and uppercase. That is, the activity will consist of writing a word in uppercase and then another in lowercase. In this way, we are working on cognitive flexibility, since it allows you to vary the writing condition and the cognitive inhibition, since it slows down and controls the most spontaneous action that would consist of continuing with the same type of lyrics.

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8. Table games

Using board games such as dominoes, chess, parcheesi, even playing cards, we are also exercising executive functions. For example, we train planning to establish the objective and see what actions are most appropriate to achieve it; we exercise decision making to choose the best play or the organization to decide how we will make it and what sequence we will make.

In the same way, we work on the cognitive flexibility that allows us to change our play according to the movements made by the opponent or the working memory that gives us the possibility to preserve and use, for a few moments, the move that our adversary.

9. Sports or motor games

Playing sports or even playing some motor games can also be useful to improve our executive functions.. For example, when we play team sports such as football or basketball, each player must plan the move you want to make, take into account the position of the members of your team to help each other and the position of the adversaries.

It will also be useful to propose different options and choose which one you think is the best alternative, anticipating the possible consequences that it can generate and being flexible to the different setbacks that can arise.