Your textbook describes many of the deficits associated with executive functioning. Repair refers to the ability to revise a plan or to establish alternatives. This process is very difficult for a brain injury survivor to learn and implement. As we mentioned last week, survivors tend to be fairly concrete and want to do things exactly as they were done before the injury. Awareness deals with the ability to make insightful statements about behavior and to modify behavior if appropriate.
Perseveration is the inappropriate repetition of a behavior or thought.
For instance, the survivor might continue to ask a question during a retraining session even though the question has been answered several times. Because executive function deficits may not affect routine, well-structured tasks, these deficits may not be apparent immediately after the injury and may never be apparent on formal testing. This is an important concept to understand when working with survivors. As cognitive retraining specialists, you will work with survivors that vary in their executive functions skills. It is important to know where the survivors' executive functioning skills breaks down.