The DYSfunctionality of Executive Function Miriam Cherkes-Julkowski, Ph.D. Over the past two decades, executive functions and their designated brain location in the frontal cortex have received increasing attention. They have been assigned a causative role in a number of disorders including schizophrenia (Weickert, Goldberg, Gold, Bigelow, Egan, Weinberger, 2000), Tourrette syndrome (Landon & Oggel, 2002), autism (Tanguay, 2000; Pennington & Ozonoff, 1996), obsessive compulsive disorder (Rauch & Grabiel, 2000), violent and criminal behavior (Goldberg, 2001; Price et al, 1990) and nearly all learning disabilities (Denckla, 1996). Attributions to executive functions as the cause of behavioral and cognitive problems have increased with the incidence and concern regarding attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) (Barkley, 2000; Bayliss & Roodenrys, 2000; Mirsky, 1996). The fact that a single entity could explain such a wide range of “outliers” suggests that it represents something which is at the heart of adaptation. One possibility for why the idea of executive functions assumes such a dominant role is that it represents the very idea of normalcy; i.e., the management of thought and action toward conformity with standards of social adjustment and therefore with what is accepted as sound judgment (Barkley, 2000; Price, et al, 1990). Another is that it acts as an all-purpose explanation. When it is unclear why a person isn’t performing in an accepted way, the “explanation” is that there is a problem in executive functions, i.e, if they can’t effect the desired outcome, the reason is that they cannot command themselves to execute the necessary steps (note the tautology). The two possibilities are not mutually exclusive. Together, these “explanations” combine to create an empty circularity in which an omniscient executive monitors right-wrong behaviors according to a preconceived, stepwise plan. In its self-referential circularity, it is hopelessly without feedback from any external information field. It gives rise to the common situation in which a student can apply the prescribed plan, compute a correct answer of 12.508, read it as “12 point 5-0-8”, while asserting that the answer is more than 1000. It gives rise to the situation where a student can execute the assigned steps in writing a paper and have nothing, or worse, contradictory things to say. It gives rise to the agitation of a third grader who, when asked to actually solve an actual problem, insisted that he could make no move until given a program specifying what steps he was supposed to execute. It gives rise to Executive Functionining: Concept and Definition There are a number of definitions of executive functions but all share the idea of an over-riding, higher order, control agency that marshals subordinate resources for the ordered execution of steps necessary for deliberate, intentional goal attainment, i.e., a top-down executive “responsible for strategy selection, planning, and the attentional control of action” (Bayliss & Roodenrys, 2000, p.163). Executive functions are assigned the role of invoking the sequence of functions that need to be activated and subduing those that need to be inhibited. The begged questions include: 1) the viability of a unidirectional, central command center; 2) the degree to which the critical aspects of goal attainment proceed stepwise along a preprogrammed path without error or diversion and 3) the role of the goal itself in mandating the appropriate approach to it. The terminology is telling. Executive functions have slowly become one executive function (EF). The merging of multiple aspects of an executive into one function removes the last vestige of “democratic” interactions among the subcomponents. With them goes the influence of action “on the ground”, the vital roles of spontaneity and diversity in supporting dynamic stability (Swenson, 2000). With the loss of dynamic, diverse interactions, out goes the potential for feedback, growth, change. Static centrality is given full weight and with it the pseudo-legitimization of a central, unidirectional, command and control agency. The concept of EF renames a number of old ideas that have failed the viability test. The idea of EF and that of its forerunners rests on the unsupportable assumption that there can be a single agency that omnisciently manages all other, subordinate functions. All versions of this idea begin to fall apart with the need to posit yet another, this time more superordinate, more omniscient structure to manage the first and then another to manage the second, and so on in an infinite regress of executive agencies of “top dog” status (Hofstadter, 1979). The only way out of the regress is to replace all functions within a single dynamic where all processes affect each other and order is both spontaneous and inevitable (Swenson, 2000). The idea of a central, unidirectional, executive function is regressive historically and in its form of explanation. Historically, the idea of a central, omniscient, little-man-in-the-head is an old, failed idea, now refurbished and modernized by giving it a brain location. Executive function is the homunculus dressed up as frontal cortex, causality at the level of a single, omniscient entity. The little man in the head is now called the supervisory attentional system (Norman & Shallice, 1986; Bayliss & Roodenrys, 2000). Artificial intelligence is now under the protection of a brain location. EF is regressive in its explanatory power as well, simply assigning agency farther and farther back in the sequence of events; and simply assigning agency instead of revealing casuality. CLICK HERE TO FIND THE COMPLETE MONOGRAPH |
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