Reflexive Questioning is an Easy Activity to Help Develop the Brain’s Executive Function

Written By Tera Sumpter

Even after years helping kids grow and develop their executive function in my speech-language therapy practice, I’m still amazed by how fundamental EF skills are to day-to-day life and learning. As I often say, they’re the foundation for ALL conscious learning. They’re also critical to social interactions. In this article, I’ll tell you a bit about why executive function is so important. I’ll also teach you an easy way to get started cultivating the executive function skills with the kids in your life.

Why Is Executive Function the Foundation for All Conscious Learning?

Executive function is the boss of the brain. Executive function isn’t the doer of the task, it’s the “cuer.” It’s the part of our brains that helps us recognize when a task is necessary or appropriate and kicks it off. (Okay, I made up the word “cuer,” but it’s the best word for it. Catchy, isn’t it? I’m going to stick with it.)

Like the director of a musical or a play, executive function is usually invisible. When it goes well, we aren’t necessarily aware of it, even when it happens in our own heads.
When executive functions aren’t working well, it shows, but it is not immediately obvious what the source of the dysfunction is. We’ve all seen a poor performance in a movie or play from an actor we usually like. What’s your first thought when that happens? Geez, Tom Hanks must have missed his coffee that day. Or maybe that just wasn’t the part for him. Sometimes, though, it’s directing decisions that make the acting look bad. Similarly, executive dysfunction may masquerade as a poor actor in speech, language, reading, writing, math... many activities that educators, speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, psychologists and other professionals target daily.

Why Are Kids with Executive Function Difficulties Often Misunderstood?

Therapists, educators, and parents often focus on developing skills in speech, language, reading, writing, math, social situations, etc. But often the problem is not the skill (doing the task), it’s executive function (cuing the task). 

So many kids I see have been labeled as lazy or inattentive. People have assumed that, since the child knows how to do the task, the issue preventing her from doing it is lack of motivation. I’m not sure why that’s the answer so many adults default to, but I really hope my work helps as many people as possible switch from that default assumption.

Executive function governs our ability to:

  • Perceive

  • Focus

  • Sustain attention

  • Inhibit

  • Pause

  • Shift

  • Initiate

  • Self-monitor

  • Self-correct

  • Self-modulate

  • Sequence

  • Execute

  • Be flexible

  • Gauge

  • Analyze

  • Generate

  • Prioritize

  • Plan and organize thoughts

  • Have adequate working memory

  • Make decisions

That’s not an exhaustive list, but you get the idea.

Now, imagine an academic activity: It could be reading quietly or listening to someone read a book to you. It could be doing geometry. Any academic activity will do... Can you envision the difficulty a student would have with doing any of those activities without the skills on this list? How about half of the list? One third?

Executive function governs and relies on our ability to connect with ourselves and with the environment around us.

Think about what the basic requirements are for learning. Before any learning can happen, children must be connected to their surrounding environment, right? Most people learn a great deal by absorbing stimuli through their environment. In one of my all-time favorite books on executive function, Executive Functions: What They Are, How They Work, and Why They Evolved, by Russell A. Barkley, he writes:

“Humans possess an unusual adaptation-vicarious or observational learning. It involves not only immediate or delayed imitation of the actions of others but also the immediate and delayed suppression of behavior through observation of the failures and adversities of others. Observational learning provides a human with a form of experiential theft or, more accurately, plagiarism. An individual can simply witness the performance of another human and immediately re-imagine that performance. That revisualization allows a person to readjust his or her own behavior accordingly. This adjustment can result in copying the actions of another if it was successful. Or it can result in subsequently suppressing that failed response of another in the observer’s own repertoire… These human EF capacities for mental innovation and vicarious learning produce effects at both a spatial and temporal distance that is stunning in their breadth and scope.”

For instance, many children simply learn the meaning and usage of verb endings -ed and -ing without needing someone to teach them explicitly. Absorbing information and knowledge from the world around them requires being connected to that environment. They need to have an awareness of something outside their bodies. They need to be able to focus on it, sustain attention to it, and inhibit their own internal activity long enough to absorb what’s going on around them. Executive function isn’t just imperative to classroom learning, it’s the foundation of all learning.

Say Sorayah has trouble with sustained attention, sequencing, and analyzing.

How much more difficult would it be for her to solve a story problem than someone who does not have difficulty with those functions?

Imagine Eli has made a mistake on spelling a word. Even if his parent or teacher points it out to him, if he cannot self-correct, he will probably make the same mistake on the quiz, the test, the final, maybe even the paper he writes the next year.

At a more basic level, if a student has trouble with even half of those cognitive skills, how will he be able to absorb any of the information provided to him in a classroom environment? It is widely accepted that imitation is critical to most early learning (Meltzoff & Prinz, 2002). How would a child imitate any of the tasks or actions being taught in any sort of classroom or one-on-one interaction, whether it is with a tutor, parents, or even a therapist without the ability to perceive and focus on the environmental stimuli? How would she copy down the letters she is supposed to be learning if she has difficulty initiating and executing?

Reflexive Questioning: the Simple Tool that Makes a Big Difference

When they’re trying to help a child develop executive functions, I always, always encourage people to start with the technique of reflexive questioning. Reflexive questioning helps children develop the self-awareness and self-leadership required for executive functions. The best part is that reflexive questioning is easy. It doesn’t require any special training or skills. You can start immediately, and many people have told me they see results quickly.

Let me explain how reflexive questioning helps develop self-awareness and why that’s important. Our self-awareness starts with the intrapersonal (our own mind and body) and develops outward from there. Self-awareness is the first step to self-regulation.

This is why I often encounter parents, therapists, and education professionals who are exhausted from telling kids what to do over and over, even when the child knows how to perform the task. When kids have difficulty with their executive functions, they often lack the awareness required to prompt themselves to do the task.

And, unfortunately, telling kids what to do does not increase that self-awareness one bit. When you tell a child what to do, you might solve the problem at the moment (child ties shoelaces that have come untied), but the long-term problem remains (child needs to be reminded to tie shoelaces nearly every time they come untied). Rather than focusing on the task at hand, we need to develop the child’s self-awareness.

Reflexive questions increase self-awareness of actions and environment.

Reflexive questions model self-awareness and help children connect their own thoughts with what is going on around them. They help a child visualize what an appropriate next step is rather than telling them. Reflexive questions give the child the opportunity to fix their own mistakes, developing self-awareness, self-monitoring and self-correction.

Some great examples of reflexive questions that I use all the time include:

  • Where are your thoughts right now? (Helps raise child’s self-awareness)

  • Is that important right now?(Helps connect self-awareness to situational awareness)

While I’m showing these as examples to help kids with executive function difficulties, they are just useful in life, therapy, and the classroom. I use them so often, they’re part of the day-to-day culture for me at work and even at home. The therapists at my private practice even gave my husband and me bathrobes with reflexive questions on them! We LOVE them. My own kids use them to remind me of what’s important. We can all use a little help refocusing on what’s important sometimes, can’t we?

Here are a few other reflexive question examples to get you started:

  • Can you show me that?

  • What do you see yourself doing first here?

  • What do you see yourself doing next on this task?

  • What do we do after we take a turn?

  • What should we do after we ask our friend a question?

Building Confidence with Self-Awareness

It’s really important to remember that there are NO WRONG ANSWERS to reflexive questions.

You may think, “But Tera, what if I want the child to tie her shoes, and she’s thinking about running around on the playground? When I ask where her thoughts are right now, clearly the correct answer is ‘tying shoes.’” 

The correct answer is the one that accurately reflects the child’s thoughts, not the desired outcome. Remember, self-awareness is what we are working on. Self-awareness is what’s needed for repeated success. Shoelaces dragging on the ground are an opportunity to practice self-awareness. We want the child to tie shoes next time. And the time after that. Without prompting. 

If the child’s shoes are untied, and she says her thoughts are on running around, this is a good opportunity to ask follow up with more reflexive questions:

  • What do you think might happen if you do that?

  • Can you picture anything else that might be important at the moment?

  • Is there anything that might get in the way of running around with your friends right this minute?

Imagine how much more positive the experience is for the child who reaches the most helpful conclusion on her own. And the whole exercise is modeling and building the internal dialogue she’ll need to prompt herself to tie her shoes. I can’t tell you how many of my clients have told me they were in a challenging situation and heard my questions echoing in their brains, “Is that important right now?”

Telling a child to tie his shoes gets the shoes tied. (Maybe.) Helping him see what’s important in the moment will help with all kinds of situations, from refocusing attention on what the class is doing at school to bedtime routines.

Retrospective Questions

Another important type of reflexive questioning is the kind that helps the child evaluate past actions. Even when a situation does not go at all according to plan, there’s an opportunity to develop and reinforce awareness of self and situation. Here are some examples of questions to ask:

  • How did that go?

  • Would you do it that way again?

This is especially helpful when a child has difficulty self-regulating. For instance, a child might struggle with interrupting other people. After an interaction in a social setting, ask how it went or whether he would do it that way again. This helps you work with the child to develop a plan for how to reach a more desired outcome next time. It may surprise you how creative kids get when it comes to solving their own problems. No matter how surprising their ideas seem, I always give them a chance to try them out. The strategies that work for them have surprised me. And if they don’t work, that’s fine. I have a toolkit of reflexive questions to help evaluate how it went and come up with new ideas. The kid can’t screw this up. Remember: it’s the process of self-reflection and self-correction that matters.

Want to learn more? 

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Sources cited

Assessment and Intervention for Executive Function Difficulties by George McCloskey, L.A. Perkins, and B VanDivner

Executive Functions: What They Are, How They Work, and Why They Evolved, by Russell A. Barkley
The Imitative Mind: Development, Evolution, and Brain Bases, edited by Andrew Meltzoff and Wolfgang Prinz

Tera Sumpter
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