Assessment of Executive Functions in 6–9-Year-Old Children: The Problem of Ecological Validity and Development of an Observation Diary

Abstract

Assessment of the state of executive functions in children 6–9 years old is important both from the point of view of understanding the general regularities of development of the cognitive sphere at this age and for the purpose of preventing difficulties in learning and social adaptation of the child. However, many studies point to the imperfection of the diagnostic tools used for test evaluation of executive functions due to their low ecological validity. Based
on this, ecologically valid methods for executive functions assessment are currently being actively implemented. One of the most popular ones is recognized as the BRIEF questionnaire, which is offered to teachers and parents to be completed. According to research by domestic neuropsychologists, the parent’s questionnaire shows less diagnostic validity. The purpose of this article is to present a variant of the observation diary for parents based on the analysis, available diagnostic tools and problems related to ecological validity in the assessment of executive functions in children 6–9 years old. The study examined domestic and foreign methods, in particular, the neuropsychological diagnostics of the state of the III block of the brain in children 6–9 years old, developed under the guidance of T. V. Akhutina and the three-component model for evaluating executive functions in children by A. Miyake and colleagues.