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Introduction
Executive function is defined as the ability which cognitive and that enables an individual to have control over other actions in the mind, this ability involves that of stopping a particular behaviour when necessary. Research indicates that these executive function enable an individual to carry out activities surrounding him or her, it also makes a person to agree to the situations surrounding him. This Executive function concept entails the capability of an individual to understand the mental status of another person this normally involves various processes such as solving problems and also monitoring various cognitive tasks of the person. Therefore this theory of executive function puts an individual in a position to make a representation of his or her belief towards the other individual.
Discussion
As earlier stated Executive function is a metacognitive theory which suggests that a child’s capability to comprehend the other persons’ mental state is the consequence of the growth and utilization of further broad metacognitive and cognitive theories which manifest themselves through, solving problem process, the process of metarepresentation as well as the idea of self-monitoring. Research indicates that under executive function a child’s capability of pretending with regards to solving day-to-day problems as well as looking forward to other individuals’ activities is mainly founded on indirect opinions and judgments.
In essence, the Executive function is commonly referred to as the capacity to uphold suitable conducts for instance; effective management of desires, scheduling of activities to be carried out, prearranged investigation as well as idea flexibility among other factors (Perner and Lang, 2000).
Executive function in autism is referred to as a process of planning, working memory, impulse control, and mental flexibility of an individual. Looking at the executive function in the autistic field it is revealed that there have been various examinations done with an attempt of reviewing various cognitive behaviors in a child affected by the autistic disorder. Research indicates that these executive functions are normally affected when a child is found to be suffering from a neurological disorder such the autism.
Therefore this paper is in a position to discuss whether these executive functions normally lead to the failure in the false belief task by an autistic child and to justify this issue this paper will therefore look into various theories that try to understand the relationship of the brain and the sociological behavior of an autistic child. The theories are found to be covering the deficits of an individuals’ mind and factors relating to autism, research further indicates that a child’s behavior may be influenced by the executive functions this, therefore, brings in the theory of Executive dysfunction in autism this theory is found to be focused on the following factors of the mind which are planning, flexibility and inhibition.
In this theory, planning is regarded as an intricate and vibrant operation through which an individual is enabled to plan, monitor, and update various actions in their day-to-day activities. This indicates that the executive function leads to the failure of the false task by an autistic child since research clearly states that children even adults with autistic disorder are found to have their executive functions impaired. (Bolton, Macdonald, and Pickles, 1994)
Executive function carry several advantages to the child affected by autism, through which he or she is enabled to come up with an idea of what the subject matter is all about, understanding its structure, and also knowing the core source of the problem. It also enables the brain to keep several information regarding a particular situation, through which it can be able to be remembered easily.
It is therefore reported that the executive function improves the individuals’ way of gathering, compiling and the integration, and presentation of information over complex problems with few disruptions. The best advantage with the Executive function is that it enables a child suffering from autism to quickly refresh the information on a particular subject stored in the brain, and this indicates that it indulges the brain in the procedure of assimilation and connection of several ideas collected and stored in the brains (Perner and Lang, 1999).
Research also shows that executive function deficits are normally related to several neurological disorders such as Autism, depression among others. They are regarded to be taking a better role in the building of individuals anti-social behaviors it is reported that most of these executive functions normally develop when an individual is at the adolescence stage of development that is the reason why most adolescents with the executive deficit are found to be more antisocial than others.
This goes hand in hand with the theory of the mind which is regarded as the ability for an individual to carry out the reflection on what the individual’s mind is indulged in and that of the other individual around him. This, therefore, indicates that the claim that an autistic child’s failure on a false belief task is caused by an executive function deficit is very true.
Research reveals that false belief tasks are regarded to be undertakings that are linked to the correspondence that diverse individuals can have on the unlike thoughts concerning the identical circumstances in their day-to-day operations. (Ruffman, Garnham and Rideout, 2001)
Such undertakings are normally referred to as first-order tests since the undertakings merely entail supposing an individual’s mental state. For instance, research reveals that young children between the ages of three to five years have a good memory that can record how diverse persons may react to different thoughts on diverse issues in the current world.
According to Baron-Cohen, he presumes that the majority of young children affected by autism face neurological teething troubles while varying their viewpoints when reviewing what other human beings perceive regarding different thoughts in their day-to-day tasks. Baron-Cohen notes that such children affected by autism can only perfectly respond to the issues that affect them in their understanding i.e. they do not embrace a universal dimension in their reactions. (Baron-Cohen, Tager-Flusberg, and Cohen, 2002)
In his approach towards the theory of mind, it found that he first of all dealt with the theory of mind which is normally referred to as the ToM which is an approach to the child development through which he was in a position of coming up with various treatment methods of the autistic disorder. In this approach, there exist four systems that are always put together with an ambition of beliefs on the information the other individuals carry, in essence, this approach tries to explain the process of mind reading which is always divided into four units which are the Intentionality Detector commonly referred to as the ID, here Baron tries to indicate that this intentionality Detector is one way of detecting the movement of things through an individual creating the need to acquire the object.
He, therefore, goes ahead and states that this type of motion is only achieved through two concepts that are the concept of need and the concept of aspiration, research indicates that the ID module comes up as a result of the incoming perception towards a particular object in an individual, he also says that the activation of the Id In an individual may also result from other types of stimuli such as contact and resonance (Hill, 2004)
The second one is the Eye Direction Detector which is referred to as EDD, from Baron’s approaches this unit simply works using the individuals’ visual sensory system, this device normally carry’s three functions which are; to detect the presence of eyes or even something related to an eye, figuring out the direction of the individuals’ eye and also deducing whether other eyes are directed towards the same thing an individual is looking at, the third function of this module is to give the individual the ability to detect states of the object’s mind while looking at it.
The third unit is that of the Shared Attention Mechanism referred to as the SAM and lastly the Theory of Mind Mechanism which is believed to be a module that makes an individual hypothesize an extensive variety of mental conditions which results from behavioral observation.
And since the characteristic of an autistic child is that the child social interactions are impaired thus the child can not communicate with other members of society this indicates that the child has lack the theory of the mind the reason for this is that autism is regarded as a neurological disorder which starts in the early years of the child to his adulthood. (Ruffman, Garnham and Rideout, 2001)
This, therefore, makes the child have problems such as lack of expressing themselves, the child may be reported to have less awareness of the emotional feelings. Research conducted shows that many children who are autistic are normally attributed to individuals suffering from mind-blindness in this case of the theory of the mind Baron Cohen went ahead to carry out the Sally-Ann experiment which is a belief experiment on sixty-one autistic children with an ambition of assessing the theory of mind, in this experiment, it is reported that Sally and Ann were regarded as being character dolls in this study.
In this experiment, there was the involvement of a naming question through which the autistic children were put in a position of noticing the dolls by their names. In the study, Sally left a marble in her Basket and left the venue, after which Ann transferred the marble and she placed it in her basket, in her return she asked the autistic children, where would sally get her marbles? In this case, Baron goes ahead and states that if the autistic children pointed at Sally’s basket then would have passed the test and in a situation where they point to the original location of the marble then they would have failed the false test.
This study indicates clearly that children affected by the autistic disorder at many cases fail to apply the theory of mind when they are in a group. In this experiment all the children answered the question correctly and when Baron went ahead and asked another question which said where will Sally look after she returns, the children were found answering the questions in different ways from others in the room. This indicates that autistic children do not appreciate their knowledge with that of other children around them. (Baron-Cohen, 1993)
The Theory of Mind and Psychodynamics
This is another theory that may apply in this case where an individual changes his perceptions towards a particular situation; it is a correlation of transitory functions of the mind. They are simply drawn from the principles of thermodynamics and neurology practice. Research reveals that psychodynamics is the study of human behavior about drives and motivation. This largely depends on the emotion that is based on an individual’s personality.
This theory concurs that a person’s reaction at a specific time is due to the existing interaction between his or her genetic constitution, unconscious or conscious mind, and the environment that is around. Psychodynamics in medical practice is referred to as a study that is systematized and a theory that shows how psychology affects human behavior.
Therefore it is indicated that there is a great emphasis on the interaction of the conscious and the unconscious motivation and the emotions as a functional significance. This theory was developed by Sigmund Freud. He suggests that psychological flows are part of the complex brain. These are based on psychological energy that he terms as libido.
Psychodynamics is referred to as the study of the interrelationship of the diverse parts of personality, mind or the psyche and how they recount to the emotional, mental and motivational forces. This mostly occurs at the unconscious level. These mental forces in most cases are divided into two parts. One of them is the emotional force interaction while the other one deals with inner forces that affect various behaviors (Basch, 1981)
The emotional force interaction constitutes the interaction of both the motivational and emotional forces that affect a person’s behavior. These factors also affect an individual’s mental states and in most cases those that exist in the subconscious level of the brain. All these factors are based on the principles of closed systems and thermodynamics. According to Freud, the energy in the psychological component of a person’s brain is normally constant. He says that emotional changes just exist in the form of displacements. All these he says, tend to rest during discharge. (Ruffman, Garnham and Rideout, 2001)
In general terms, psychodynamics deals with the exchanges and transformations of the psychic energy that exists in an individual’s personality. The main focus is the connection that exists between the emotional states and the energetic. The emotional states include the superego, ego, and the id and their relation to the developments in a child during the early or the first days. Freud says that the ego fights with various forces. These include the outside world, super-ego, and the id. Therefore the focus of the psychodynamic model is on the interactions that are quite dynamic consisting of the superego, ego, and the id. The theory of psychodynamics interprets an individual’s behavior as that emanating from the emotional processes of forces. (Basch, 1981)
Unconscious- this is the id. This is the part of the brain that develops first in life. It is responsible for controlling parts of the brain throughout an individual’s lifetime.
The psychodynamic theory recognizes that the environment plays a major role in someone’s personality. This is termed by Freud as the ego or the conscious part of the brain. Conscious- it is the ego. It is normally grounded in reality. It normally acts as a moderator of the superego and the id. It develops as the baby interacts with the environment. Subconscious- it is the superego. It represents mores and societal principles. This is responsible for inhibiting the id from having impulses that are not appropriate in society. Conscious- it is the ego. It is normally grounded in reality. It normally acts as a moderator of the superego and the id. It develops as the baby interacts with the environment (Basch, 1981)
Research indicates that autistic children are provided with different ways of conceptualizing ideas and situations this is found by the individuals’ understanding and procession of information in the mind. The Executive function is therefore believed to play the role of recognition of the existing relationships, incorporating and creation information thus reaching an instinctive approach.
Executive function is therefore a technique that ensures that priority adheres to thus individual or common goals are achieved with ease. It also saves time in that one is already aware of what step to take since it is usually drawn by the user.
Research indicates that children suffering from autism are an analytic tag applied to the condition of mind, usually, that of fear or emotional extremes The fear associated with this disorder normally lies on a certain body part, and usually an individual imagines that he/she has a problem in that part of the body (Russell, Saltmarsh, and Hill, 1999). This disorder is found to be associated with a social phobia which is characterized by a powerful fear of becoming disgraced in social circumstances and particularly embarrassing oneself when other people are seeing him.
Lev Vygotsky’s Social development theory
This is where the cognitive development of a child is influenced by social interaction she says that while biological factors highly influence development, they just don’t occur in isolation. (Basch, 1981) Vygotsky sees development differently from Piaget. Piaget sees child development to be in four stages. There is an endpoint in goal in this development. There are formal operations, concrete, preoperational and sensorimotor in periods of cognitive growth. While Vygotsky says that child development cannot just be narrowed down to stages. He says that the social environment in a child’s life matters a lot in his development.
He reasons that adult guidance and child’s problem solving early in life are things that affect cognitive growth. He calls it the proximal development zone. He says that this is the zone where learning takes place. This is also where the child learns from their peers. Children learn speech and writing from their immediate social environment. These are tools that develop from culture and they help children to communicate their needs Piaget observed children in the preoperational stage and noticed that they had egocentric speech. He noticed that this speech was no longer there in the concrete operations stage. Vygotsky saw it as changing to internalized thoughts from social speech. He reasoned that language and thought are co-existed, none can happen without the other. (Basch, 1981)
The Neo –Vygotskian approach to child development is more effective than the radical approach. Cools in the past didn’t provide students with an environment that encouraged learning. Where they play an active role in their learning and education through this they also influence their peers’ education.
Conclusion
A child is expected to go through infancy, early childhood then middle childhood. The development of a child is naturally continuous and gradual. This includes socially, emotionally, and physically. Though this is expected, a child’s growth and development may sometimes be slower or faster than normal. Many people know that a child’s development is simply biological. Child development can also be affected by environmental factors. The people around a child will influence the child’s growth and development. Children learn by imitating and they will only imitate the people who are in contact with them early in life.
Therefore the area of weaknesses for people in the field of autism is perhaps the difficulty of understanding the supposed mind theory to comprehend and forecast individuals’ conduct. It should be noted that the theory of mind growth starts when a child is young and shifts as they grow older, as Baron-Cohen presumes.
Child development is an issue that should be taken with seriousness. Many theories explain what happens as the child grows. Research has proved that the radical approach is not effective when incorporated into the education system. Poor performances by the students were witnessed. The Neo-Vygotskian approach involves giving the children the right learning environment. This approach used in learning institutions produces high performances. Child-initiated learning is encouraged.
Reference
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Klin, A, Jones, W., Schultz, R., Volkmar, F. and Cohen, D. (2002): Visual fixation patterns during viewing of naturalistic social situations as predictors of social competence in individuals with autism: Archives of General Psychiatry, Vol. 59. Web.
Pennington, B. and Ozonoff, S. (1996): Executive functions and developmental Psychopathology. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, Vol. 37. Web.
Perner, J., and Lang, B. (1999): Development of theory of mind and executive control Trends Cognitive Sciences, Vol 3. Web.
Perner, J. and Lang, B. (2000): Theory of mind and executive function: Is there a Developmental relationship, In Baron-Cohen, S., Tager-Flusberg, H., & Cohen, D. editions: Understanding other minds: Perspectives from developmental cognitive neuroscience: Oxford, Oxford University Press. Ruffman, T., Garnham, W., & Rideout. Web.
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Russell, J, Saltmarsh, R, and Hill, E. (1999): What do executive factors contribute to the failure on false belief tasks by children with autism? Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. Web.
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