There is growing consensus that successful social performance requires higher-order cognitive processing know as executive functioning. Executive functions are the decision-making and planning processes invoked at the outset of a task and in the face of novel challenges (Singer & Bashir, 1999). These processes encompass a range of abilities that overarch "all contexts and content domains" (Denckla & Reader, 1993; p. 443). As such, executive functions allow children to disengage from the immediate context and reason about interpersonal goals; a fundamental ability in forming and maintaining positive peer relationships. Language is a fundamental part of executive control (Denckla 1996, 1998).

Executive functioning is concerned with the ability to utilize information. In other words, these functions play a deciding role in how we use what we know. Higher-order executive functions guide one's behavior by:

• Inhibiting actions
• Restraining and delaying responses
• Attending selectively
• Setting goals
• Planning strategically
• Maintaining and shifting sets

The ability to use language in interpersonally appropriate ways implicates executive function. According to Tannock and Schachar (1996), functions that are involved in social communication include:

• Recognition of the social and informational demands of the situation
• Knowledge of appropriate linguistic forms that code underlying meanings
• Ability to organize and express thoughts and ideas simultaneously through several modalities (e.g., lexical, syntactic, gesture, supersegmental features)
• Ability to make rapid, "on-line" alterations according to real time changes in the communicative context

Dysfunction in any of these components, alone or in combination, may result in social communicative deficits.

Executive Dysfunction

What is It and How Does It Effect Learning?