Executive Function Impairment in Adolescence

Neuropsychological investigations of traumatic brain injury and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder increasingly highlight the frequency of frontal lobe pathology and associated impairment of executive functions. Social success in adolescence and competence with increasingly demanding discourse tasks presuppose adequate maturation of these self-regulatory functions. This article presents a functional understanding of the executive system, its development in childhood, its relation to communication effectiveness, and an everyday approach to intervention for adolescents with executive function impairment associated with traumatic brain injury and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.