Summary & notes by Kate Cammack, Center for Teaching
Tuesday, Feb 11, 12:30-1:20pm
The CfT partnered with Diane Dekker, Assistant Director of Student Accessibility Services (SAS), and Fran Speer, LPC, a staff clinician at Counseling & Psychological Services (CAPS), to discuss executive function and how symptoms of executive dysfunction (including symptoms of ADHD) can impact students’ learning & engagement. Images in this post are taken from their slides.
Fran & Diane presented six clusters of executive functioning:
- Activation: organizing, planning, getting started, sequencing steps to complete a task
- Focus: establishing, maintaining, and shifting attention as needed
- Effort: processing speed, controlling awareness
- Memory: working memory and accessing recall
- Action: regulating physical activity (e.g., fidgeting)
Diane offered an analogy of our brains as a filing cabinet. We store information by filing it away in our brains, and some of us have more organized mental “file cabinets” than others. The more you use/access one of those “files” (stored information), the easier it’ll be to access that file again in the future. This helps underscore the importance of “spaced practice” or “distributed practice” with the material – if you repeatedly work with key information over time, it will help with the retention and retrieval of that information.
There are many reasons why students might struggle with executive function. For instance, Fran mentioned that our current students experienced the pandemic at an important time for building executive function skills, and thus might be at a different development point than prior cohorts of students. Some students might have underdeveloped executive function skills that don’t meet diagnostic criteria (e.g., for ADHD); others might meet diagnostic criteria but remain undiagnosed (per Brooke Moody, self-medication with caffeine can be common in this group). Students with an ADHD diagnosis may/may not be on medication and/or engaging in psychotherapy or behavioral support, for a variety of reasons (see below).
Attention interacts with motivation in ways that can be particularly challenging for students with ADHD. For instance, when students need to engage with “non-preferred” tasks or work, it can be particularly hard to get started and remain focused when the work is not captivating or intrinsically motivated. Conversely, students with ADHD may hyperfocus on “preferred” tasks or work, spending prolonged amounts of time getting “into the weeds” and having difficulty pausing/stopping that work and transitioning to other activities. Diane said this can be related to “time-blindness,” or difficulty estimating time, which contributes to poor time management.
A few resources:
- Diane runs open workshops on executive function & study skills for all students (with or without an ADHD diagnosis); the dates/times are posted to Engage
- Diane will happily meet one-on-one with any student who could benefit from individual coaching; they can set appointments with her via email: deddekker@sewanee.edu
- CAPS runs a BEBP Clinic for students with ADHD:
- To diagnose ADHD, psychological assessment/evaluation must be done by an outside provider; Dr. Nicole Noffsinger-Frasier is one local resource, and there are other providers specializing in assessment in Chattanooga, Murfreesboro, etc.
- The Hendricks Fund is an endowment that can provide financial support for students’ educational needs, including costs associated with psychological assessment & evaluation. Students can contact Diane Dekker in the SAS office for more information.
- University Health Services (UHS) has the ability to prescribe & monitor medication for students with an ADHD diagnosis
- Many apps can help with organization & task management, including GoblinTools and ToDoist.
- Dr. Russell Barclay is a clinical neuropsychologist who specializes in ADHD; he has authored many books on ADHD and has accessible YouTube videos