Ask the Expert chat with Russell Barkley, PhD, sponsored by CHADD and the National Resource Center on ADHD

Participant: In your opinion, are all five executive functions discussed in your video affected to the same degree in a person with ADHD?

Russell Barkley: No. Although all of them are affected to some extent, this can vary from person to person. That variation may have to do with how the person came to have ADHD (acquired brain damage, genetics, etc.) and with which parts of the executive system are more or less impaired in their case. It also may have to do with their pre-existing level of other abilities, such as verbal and spatial skills.

In my view, executive functioning is self-regulation. People do things to themselves in order to modify their own behavior so that they are more likely to attain a goal or change some future consequence to improve their welfare. That is self-regulation. There are at least five to six things people do to themselves:
• Self-direct their attention is one that produces self-awareness.
• A second is to visualize their past to themselves.
• A third is to talk to themselves in their mind.
• A fourth is to be able to inhibit and modify their emotional reactions to events. This can also assist with self-motivation.
• A fifth is that they are able to restrain themselves, or what one could call self-discipline. They inhibit strong urges to act.
• Finally, people are able to play with information in their mind. To take it apart, manipulate it in various ways, and recombine it to form new arrangements.

That is what they do when they are engaged in mental problem-solving. They play around with ideas until they find a good combination that seems to overcome the obstacle or problem. By adulthood, people are able to do all of these things in their mind - a sort of Swiss army knife of mind tools for self-control toward the future. Our self-control is always aimed at changing our future. That is what makes an EF executive in nature. It is self-change in order to achieve some goal.

Read more of the transcript of this exciting and informative chat with Russell Barkley about the importance of executive function in understanding and managing ADHD