Adolescent Brain Development & Executive Functioning

Link To Article: http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.western.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=3&sid=9cd4bea2-268b-4ba5-8dd1-f25fcac1e804%40pdc-v-sessmgr03 This article was refreshing in that it took basic principles for teaching adolescents, derived from significant amounts of data, and put together a comprehensive article full of direct strategies for teachers to apply to their classrooms.  They also did a good job of starting off their paper with a comprehensive definition of what executive functioning is, something that a surprising amount of articles on executive functioning fail to do. They define executive function as "having the cognitive flexibility to plan, organize, stay focused, access one's working memory, and self regulate one's behavior."  The analogy that they posit to readers is that having a strong set of executive functioning skills is akin to having a good "air traffic controller working to maintain the safe, orderly and expeditious flo

Link to article: https://www.scribd.com/document/380571015/Stressful-Events-and-Executive-Functioning-in-Adolescents-with-and-without-History-of-Grade-Repetition In this article, Luiza Mothes, Christian Haag Kristensen, Rodrigo Grassi Olivera, Irani Iracema De Lima Argimon, Rochelle Paz Fonseca and Tatiana Quarti Irigaray noticed that there were only a few studies on the relationship between stressful events and grade repetition.  They decided then that their main goal was "to compare the frequency of exposure to stressful events, academic performance, executive functioning, and performance on working memory tasks between adolescents with and without a history of grade repetition." The authors were wise to note that the impact of a stressful event is not necessarily determined by the event itself, but by the appraisal of the event by the individual.  Since their participant pool was adolescents, they were quick to note that adolescents are not necessarily yet equipped w

Link to Article: http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.western.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=3&sid=72505655-86e0-4f6d-b104-d5d34b732029%40sdc-v-sessmgr02 In this Journal, Kelsey S. Dickson, Jeffery A Ciesla and Kate Zelic set out to test their hypotheses that "greater levels of executive dysfunction will be associated with higher levels of depressive symptomatology."  Specifically, the executive functions that they were watching were set-shifting, inhibition, monitoring and preservation.  They had a secondary hypothesis as well: "higher levels of executive dysfunction will also be associated with higher levels of rumination. As a secondary goal of this study, we examined the mediating effects of rumination on the relationship between EF and depression....however, it is also possible that EF may serve to mediate the relationship between rumination and depression." They sampled 86 high school students, ages 16-18, and had them take several computer administe