Executive skills and children
with SLCN
Summary of Article by
Lucy Henry, David Messer
and Gilly Nash
From: Afasic News Spring /
Summer 2012 (p6-7)
What are executive skills?
 Used where well-learned way of doing
things no longer appropriate
 Essential in novel / more demanding
situations
 School is all about new learning – so
executive skills essential!
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Remember recently learnt information
Generate new ways of responding
Change strategies flexibly
Plan new solutions
Avoid out-of-date / irrelevant responses
Executive skills
 Working memory
 Remembering relevant information while
carrying out other tasks
 Needed for mental arithmetic, reading
comprehension many school-based
learning tasks
 Fluency
 Generating examples/solutions/ideas
 Needed for creative writing,
mathematical problem-solving, etc
Executive skills
 Inhibition
 New learning - ignore previous, simpler ways of
understanding / responding
 E.g. exceptions to spelling rules; higher level
science!
 Switching
 Shifting attention between activities / sources
and modes of information
 Changing strategy in response to circumstances
 Planning
 Need to plan new solutions / new tasks
 Essential for education – and life
Relevance to SLI
 In school, children can’t avoid tasks
with high executive demands
 Children with SLCN may already be at
a disadvantage:
 Fewer well-learned responses for range
of situations
 Find it difficult to change previously
learned responses
 Everyday planning and organisation
difficult
Does this sound like any children
on your caseload…?
Research Project
 Focus on children with SLI (6-7% of
all school-children in UK)
 Hypothesis: novel tasks with high
executive load = challenging for
children with SLI
 However, not clear if also true for
non-language-based tasks
Research Methods
 Assessed 41 children with SLI aged 8-14
 Referred by SLTs or Headteachers
 Administered ‘executive’ tasks for all 5 aspects
of executive skill
 One language-based measure and one not
requiring language for each area
 Compared with 88 typically developing and 31
with SLCN (SLI criteria not met)
 Group differences assessed after controlling for
age, nonverbal IQ and verbal ability in a series
of regression analyses.
Did children with SLI have
executive difficulties?
 Yes - significantly lower performance than
typical children on 6 of the 10 tasks
 Children with SLI had difficulties with:
 Remembering information while carrying out
another task
 Generating examples around a theme
 Planning new solutions for novel tasks
 Inhibiting ‘out of date’ responses
 Children with both SLI & general SLCN had
just as many problems on executive tasks
which did not require language
Implications
 The difficulties were clinically meaningful,
as two thirds of the children with SLI
showed at least three exectutive function
impairments
 Is SLI as a disorder really ‘specific’? consider multiple deficit models (e.g.
Bishop 2006)
 Considerable support for children with SLI
on learning tasks needed
 Will need range of intervention strategies
beyond just those for language
What can we do to support…?
 …working
memory?
 …fluency
(generating
alternative
responses)?
 …inhibition?
 …switching?
 …planning?
Strategies to use: Memory
 Visual aids to support memory in
everyday life
 Visual aids while engaged in
demanding tasks such as free writing
or mental arithmetic to help hold
relevant information in mind, e.g.:
 Spellings for common / difficult words
 Key facts
 Table squares
Strategies: Generating ideas and
planning
 Clear task structure
 ‘Hints’ to help generate and plan new
ideas for solving problems
 Support needed as affects learning
and everyday living
Strategies to support inhibition
 Reminders to inhibit responses if
getting in way of new learning, e.g.
flashcards of spelling rules and of
exceptions
Summary
 Findings suggests difficulties of children
with SLI go beyond language – broader
cognitive difficulties
 Children with ‘milder’ language difficulties
(SLCN group) showed similar pattern
 Implications for learning and everyday life
as affect types of skills we all need to deal
with new situations and novel challenges
 Learning of children with SLI may be
supported by strategies that help support
executive skills
Read the original! (available online)
 Henry, L. A., Messer, D. J. and Nash,
G. (2012), Executive functioning in
children with specific language
impairment. Journal of Child
Psychology and Psychiatry, 53: 37–
45. doi: 10.1111/j.14697610.2011.02430.x