Understanding Executive Functioning:
A Primer for Occupational Therapists
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Presenters: Emily Lesher, MS, CCC-SLP and Lauren Mangold, MS, CCC-SLP
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Level: Intermediate.
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Contact Hours: 1.5 contact hours
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AOTA Areas: Occupational Therapy Service Delivery Domain: Performance Skills, Context and Environment Process: Intervenntion
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Audience: Occupational Therapists, OT Assistants, Speech and Language Pathologists, Mental Health Providers
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Completion Requirements: To earn contact hours for this course participants must view this course in its entirety, and successfully complete the accompanying course quiz
In the early years of life, the development of self-regulation skills, play skills, interpersonal social skills, and cognitive-linguistic development should be understood to be neurologically interdependent processes. Effective interventions to support children’s development in any one of these domains by necessity must address all of them, and must “support children to mobilize the strategies they learn during intervention for use in real life”. Playing challenges children to build their capacity for regulation in the context of safe social engagement.
It is critical for specialists such as occupational therapists and speech language pathologists to think outside of their own “domain-specific” skills in order to support global development appropriately. We use a well-loved developmental stage framework for play skills, The Westby Play Scale devised by Carol Westby, PhD CCC-SLP, and apply knowledge from the occupational therapy, speech-language pathology, trauma-informed care, and child mental health fields. We propose a model for building self-regulation skills through responsive scaffolding of play in young children based on their play level. This model is inclusive of individual differences in child development by considering the underlying skills and competencies at each stage, and provides adult partners specific strategies to support play and self-regulation development.
This course utilizes a PowerPoint presentation.
Slides are available for download.
Learning Objectives
Emily is the Speech-Language Pathology Coordinator at OTA the Koomar Center. Emily is a certified and licensed Speech-Language Pathologist. She received her Masters of Science degree in Speech-Language Pathology from Ithaca College. She also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Communication Sciences and Disorders from Nazareth College in Rochester, NY. She has experience working with children with a broad range of diagnoses and abilities in school-based, clinic-based, and early intervention settings. She is certified in Story Grammar Marker (R) and the Hanen (C) Programs: It Takes Two to Talk (R) , More than Words (R) , and Talk Ability (R). She also has clinical training in the Social Thinking (R) curriculum.
Lauren is a licensed and certified Speech-Language Pathologist practicing at OTA the Koomar Center. She grew up in Colorado and studied Speech Language and Hearing Science as well as Psychology at CU Boulder before moving to Boston to earn her Master’s degree in Speech-Language Pathology from Northeastern University. Lauren has completed clinical training in the use of developmental approaches to support children cognitive , language, and emotional capacities through Hanen (C) Centre programs, certification in DIR/Floor-time, and additional graduate level courses in both social-emotional and social-cognitive development of children. She strives to help every child develop core feelings of control and belonging using the guiding principle that playing is learning.
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