Executive Functioning: What Develops When

What Executive Functioning Is, and Why It Takes 25 Years

Nicole Hood built this session around one idea. Executive functioning (skills that drive goal directed behavior) is not a single skill. It is a set of behaviors that come online over many years. She shared a definition from Nadja Dowski that frames these functions as the brain's chief operating system. They sit in the prefrontal cortex (the brain's front planning region). Hood pulled two jobs out of that image. One job belongs to the top executive: deciding, planning, and setting goals. The other belongs to the executive assistant: daily tasks, organization, and follow through. A plan needs both jobs done.

The anatomy matters for how we teach. This part of the brain is the last part to develop. Other systems come online first. Early childhood shows only emerging pieces of these skills. That is why Hood draws a line at about age eight to ten. Before that window, teaching a child about their own thinking rarely sticks. Metacognition (thinking about your own thinking) is itself an executive function. It does not start developing until that same age range.

Development also runs long. Hood said most of these functions finish around age 25 in typically developing people. For people with developmental delays, it can take longer. Some people may never fully develop some of these behaviors. When the skills lag, the label is executive dysfunction (when these skills lag behind). Hood treated lifelong support as a normal outcome, not a failure.

Teaching an individual about their own executive functioning isn't super effective until they're between eight and 10 years.

From the talk — Nicole Hood

The Eight Executive Functions Hood Teaches From

Hood works from a list of eight. They are self-monitoring (noticing your effect on others), task initiation (getting a task started), impulse control (stopping an urge in time), and emotional control (keeping feelings fit for the setting). The other four are cognitive flexibility (shifting when the situation changes), planning (thinking ahead about demands), working memory (holding small bits of information), and organization (keeping track of your own stuff). Task initiation gets more credit than it usually does. Starting a task means picturing the end result, task analyzing it, and working backward to find step one. That costs a lot of bandwidth before any work happens.

The categories come from cognitive and developmental psychology, and the edges are blurry. Hood said some groups use six, some use twelve, and the general consensus is that these eight are the core. The behaviors overlap, so one behavior can live in two buckets. Impulse control is a good example. It needs some sense of right and wrong, which broadens around age eight, though specific rules can be taught earlier. At its core it is rule governed behavior (behavior that follows a stated rule).

She drove the point home with three activities. First a string of digits to hold while she interrupted with other prompts. Then the Stroop test (name the ink, not the word), which attendees found genuinely hard. Her takeaway was practical. Dysfunction here comes from thin neural connections in the front of the brain, and practice builds them. The last activity asked everyone to task analyze their morning. Getting to the training on time used all eight functions. She also flagged the cost: the more tasks you front load, the less capacity you have later in the day.

This is testing your working memory.

From the talk — Nicole Hood

Birth Through Twelve: What Shows Up When

From zero to four, Hood described these skills as emerging rather than present. Expect pointing and grabbing. Expect sorting objects by feature, function, and class. Expect starting and finishing short tasks. Transitions are an emerging skill at this age, not a settled one. Early safety behaviors show up here too, like not touching a hot stove, which already requires impulse control. Early cooperative play belongs on the list, because some social skills rest on executive functioning.

The five to twelve range is where, in her words, things really start to cook. Children become aware of how long a task will take. They initiate and finish tasks up to about an hour. They follow checklists. Early problem solving appears, including task analyzing. Emotional regulation covers common frustrations. Self-reflection about their own behavior becomes possible. Metacognition opens up around eight to ten. This is when you can teach thinking patterns directly instead of only arranging the environment.

Hood uses norms as a check on her own goals. Her favorite breakdown comes from Life Skills Advocate, compiled from peer reviewed studies and spanning early childhood into early adulthood. She links it in the session handout. She also cross-references behavior norms from ABA Visualize for things like tantrums and independent transitions. She checks the same against items on the VB-MAPP (a common ABA skills assessment). Her reason is that these skills scaffold. A gap early on makes later goals harder. Going back to fill it beats pushing a goal that was never ready.

We want to make sure our expectations aren't higher for our clients.

From the talk — Nicole Hood

Teens and Young Adults: Where the Gaps Get Obvious

Because these skills are cumulative, the teen years expose what earlier years hid. Hood described learners who coasted through elementary school and part of middle school. The environment carried a lot of the load for them. Then upper level classes arrive, the built-in supports thin out, and things fall apart.

Typical teen behaviors give you a yardstick. Planning the steps of homework and projects. Planning social events with peers. Adjusting estimates of how long a task takes and how fast they are working. Working to avoid the fallout of poor time management, like lower grades or lost privileges. Following complex routines. Sorting out conflicts with several people at once. Tolerating unpredictable changes. Empathy and perspective taking keep developing. Hood also noted a rise in risk related behavior around safety rules, alongside better self-monitoring and self-awareness.

At 18 and up, the finished picture looks like holding several plans at once for several goals. Unpredictability brings stress, but not enough to derail the day. Orderly systems keep hygiene and household tasks running. Emotional regulation is largely settled, so outbursts and frustration are manageable. The person checks their own work and gauges their performance against others.

This stage is also where support decisions get political. Hood sees pressure in IEP meetings (a school's special education plan) to fade supports toward grade level. Her caution is this: pulling a support that is working can rip a block out of the learner's mental Jenga. Then you end up adding it back. The balance is real, because nobody wants a learner who is prompt dependent (leaning too hard on cues). Buy-in carries a lot of weight here. She has had strong results using acceptance and commitment training (goal setting rooted in values). That also means checking that parent and teen priorities actually match.

gaps really start to become obvious at this age.

From the talk — Nicole Hood

Executive Dysfunction: Related Diagnoses and Assessment Options

Hood offered a non-exhaustive list of conditions that come with executive functioning challenges. It included autism, ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, OCD, depression, schizophrenia, and pathological demand avoidance (strong resistance to everyday demands). She also named causes that change these skills after they develop: addiction, trauma, head injuries, brain tumors, and Alzheimer's. The point was pattern recognition, not diagnosis. If you see trouble across several of the eight functions, that is your clue.

An attendee asked about trauma specifically. Hood was careful about the limits of her own reading. She has not dug deep into the literature on trauma and executive functioning. What she does know is that trauma changes how the amygdala fires, either over-responding or under-responding. It also affects behavior and cognitive development broadly. In her own caseload, clients with significant trauma tend to have significant executive functioning challenges.

On assessment, she started with a limitation. Skills-based assessments do capture some behaviors tied to these broad categories. But they were not built with this lens, so they can miss prerequisites. She reviewed three executive functioning specific tools and linked them in the handout. The BRIEF (a parent and teacher rating scale) looks at everyday signs of executive control and was her favorite of the three. The Executive Skills Questionnaire is short and a self-report (the person rates their own skills). It gives you the inside view when the learner can complete it. MetaCOG is school based and designed for a specific curriculum. Hood was upfront that she has read the items but has not used these tools in practice. Getting insurance to fund them on their own has not worked for her. She has seen them funded as a supplement to more common assessments.

Why Logic Fails Mid Escalation: The Amygdala Problem

Before her strategy section, Hood planted one piece of brain science that cuts across all eight functions. The amygdala (the brain's alarm system) runs fight or flight. It evolved so that when a predator shows up, the thinking parts of the brain step aside. The split-second reaction parts take over instead. In her framing, the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex are binary. When one is on, the other is off.

That has a direct consequence for practice. During an intense escalation, or any moment the learner feels threatened or scared, executive functioning is offline. You cannot reason a child into a plan right then. You cannot get them to reflect on their thinking. Any redirection that leans on logic, reasoning, language processing, or planning asks the wrong brain region to work.

Hood's fix is to pick strategies that route around that region. Most established executive functioning supports do exactly that by design. She also turned it into a self-check for clinicians. If your replacement behavior or your redirection script keeps failing during escalation, the problem may not be the learner's motivation. You may be asking for thinking when the brain is not in thinking mode.

They're in a fight or flight response.

From the talk — Nicole Hood

Strategy One: Make Everything More Visual

Visuals are Hood's first move, and she explained why in behavioral terms. Language processing costs a lot of executive functioning, and it lives in the same front region of the brain. So words pile onto the exact system that is already strained. Spoken instructions go over heads or add frustration. Visuals do not draw on that region in the same way. That makes them useful for behavior expectations, transitions, communication, and teaching coping skills. Written words count as visuals too, so a written instruction can do the same work as a picture.

Her examples spanned ages and settings. A visual timer works because it makes time concrete: how much is left, how much is gone. She extends that into drawn timelines when teaching a learner to plan backward from a deadline. Communication cards taped to a desk let a student point instead of finding words. First and then boards set expectations around screen time. A step by step visual taught one student how to participate in library time, which spoken reminders had not.

Two design rules came with the strategy. Match the visual to the learner's interests and comprehension. A text checklist is useless for a child who is not reading yet. And if clip art is not landing, swap in real photographs of the actual items or the actual room. Hood used a turtle image to make the abstract phrase slow down concrete for one student. She then repeated that same image across settings. She also places reminders where they are easy to see but will not single the learner out from peers.

Visuals are really powerful at any age.

From the talk — Nicole Hood

Strategies Two and Three: Chunking and Static Expectations

Hood calls her second strategy chunking with younger students. It is task analysis (breaking a task into steps) taught as a skill the learner can run themselves. Complex verbal instructions and multi-step tasks feel overwhelming, and that effort alone tanks motivation to start. Smaller parts lower the cost of step one. Instead of clean your room, the prompt becomes find all the blocks, or put the dress-ups in the box. Older clients can write the steps out as a checklist. Hood uses it on herself: fold the socks, start the silverware. The goal is a bite small enough to begin.

Her third strategy is static rather than dynamic expectations. Moving targets are hard to hit for anyone. They are much harder when the targeting system itself is not working well. These learners already struggle with organization and planning, so changing rules add load they cannot absorb. Consistency reduces it. That means consistent expectations, consistent boundaries, and the same contingency every time a behavior expectation is met.

Consistency in relationships was the piece she valued most across ages. Hood aims to show up the same way with a learner every single time. She noted it can look strict from the outside. In her experience, the learners she works with crave it. Predictability builds psychological safety (knowing what to expect from people), and that makes expected behavior possible. The same logic applies at home. Consistent boundaries take parent bandwidth, so she helps families build static systems for chores, daily routines, and organization. That frees up the adults and gives the learner a stable base to practice the rest of these skills on.

This can also create a lot of behavior momentum.

From the talk — Nicole Hood