Executive Function News
Ten Minutes of Exercise Before Class Sharpened Students’ Executive Function
Researchers had university students do ten minutes of focused movement right before their regular class and measured executive function before and after. The benefit held up in the real classroom, not just a lab.
Lost Sleep Degrades Every Part of Executive Function
A meta-analysis of 79 studies finds sleep loss impairs working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility together, in a pattern suggesting the damage runs through the shared core the three components all draw on.
Children’s Executive Function Is Behind Pre-Pandemic Norms, Three Major Studies Confirm
Direct, repeated assessments of more than 3,900 children across the United States and United Kingdom converge on the same finding: the cognitive skills that allow children to focus, plan, and regulate their own behavior are developing more slowly than they did before 2020.
Adult ADHD Diagnoses Are Rising Sharply. The Story Behind the Numbers Is More Complicated Than the Headlines.
More than 15 million U.S. adults now have an ADHD diagnosis. Women’s rates doubled between 2020 and 2022. The truth is harder than either competing narrative captures, and it includes a population the discourse rarely names.
Executive Function News is a research and analysis publication of NBEFC®, the National Board for Executive Function Certification. NBEFC offers board certification for executive function coaches at nbefc.org. Our editorial process applies independent journalistic standards to research coverage, regardless of the topic’s relationship to NBEFC’s programs.