You will be amazed by how your understanding and application of the concepts you explore above will relate to your job as a Cognitive Retraining Specialist. As you can gather, executive functions are extremely important to our daily successes. Many people mistake problems in the above areas as indicators of low intelligence. Difficulties such as failing to accomplish goals, problems performing multiple tasks, or trouble with sequencing steps in a task can occur in the presence of average or above average intelligence and adequate recall of information. Raskin suggests that, in fact, a survivor with average or above average intelligence and adequate memory recall may still exhibit difficulties with executive functions.
Survivors usually attempt to utilize the same skills in the same way as they did before the injury.
The information may still be there, but might have to be accessed differently. Ah, that's where we come in. One of our jobs is to help survivors find new ways to access information that may still be available. If the information is no longer available, we must help survivors utilize strategies that will make new information easier to access. This is a very exciting but challenging job.