Teaching Preschoolers Executive Function Skills Can Help Reduce ADHD

Executive Function Skills Can Also Increase Academic Performance Levels

A neuroscientist and Psychiatry professor at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver has just completed developing a new program for preschoolers that will hopefully reduce diagnosis rates of attention deficient hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and help poorer children perform as well as children from richer homes.

Dr. Adele Diamond, Canada Research Chair in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, has developed the program based off of her research on the brain's functions in the prefrontal cortex area of the brain that are executive functions (EFs). EFs include a person's ability to not become distracted while thinking, give well-thought out answers to questions instead of impulse answers, work with new information like solving problems, and to think and solve problems outside of a given parameter.

Dr. Diamond has just finished a first evaluation of a new curriculum for preschoolers called Tools of the Mind. The program focuses on developing those sorts of EFs. Tools of the Mind has been being developed for the past 12 years by two educational psychologists named Deborah Leong and Elena Bodrova. The program has been used experimentally in a few states in the U.S.

Dr. Diamond argues that teaching EFs is critical for the development of the brain and for academic success as well as for a successful life. She also argues that EFs are very seldom taught in our present education systems and that teaching them can make a significant difference in how children perform and function, particularly disadvantaged children. She states that EFs can be taught even to preschoolers.