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Behavioral Management of Gifted Children:
A Neuropsychological Approach

By Paul Beljan

Sidebar:

The Executive Functions reside in the front of the brain and consist of:

· Working Memory – the ability to hold two or more points of thought in mind simultaneously and use that information to generate novel solutions or behaviors. A child with a working memory deficit is unable to plan ahead or take into account the consequences that will result from his/her actions. The child is impulsive, or stimulus bound – attracted to or distracted by (bound by) extraneous stimuli in the environment.

· Inhibition – the ability to stop when you should (behavioral brakes). A child with disinhibition appears to be willful and have too much energy. It appears that the child won’t behave when, in fact, the child can’t behave appropriately because of an inability to inhibit behavior.

· Planning and Organization – abilities that are the direct result of a functioning working memory and inhibition system. To understand the role that working memory and inhibition play in planning and organizing consider the following.

A child must:

- Keep things in mind to think.

- Be able to think to plan.

- Be able to plan to organize.

- Inhibit extraneous behavior to think ahead.

If a child cannot think ahead, how does he/she:

- Factor in consequences of behavior?

- Inhibit or direct his/her own behavior?

- Change behavior?

- Clean his/her room and do homework?

· Attention – requires four abilities: focus/execute, sustain, shift, and encode.

- Focus/execute is the ability of the brain to modify what it knows and allows us to quickly use old skills in new ways.

- Sustain is the ability to pay attention as directed by the frontal executive functioning system.

- Shift is the ability to use cues from the environment to appropriately direct one’s concept formation/problem solving efforts.