In this article, researchers aim to broaden the understanding of executive function. It is the process used to guide goal-directed behavior. This includes the ability to prioritize behaviors, resist information that is irrelevant to the situation, and switch between different goals. Like many other concepts in psychology, executive function has many different dimensions and there are many divergent views on its basic structure. Because executive function involves an individual guiding their own behavior often in novel situations, it is inherently difficult to measure in the laboratory. The laboratory setting is structured, which can cause problems with appropriate testing measures, especially when the participant is given rules or instructions. As we learned in class, the Wisconsin Card Sort Test (WCST) is used to measure executive function. Usually in this task an individual sorts cards according to one rule and then is asked to move to a different rule while using the same cards. Previous studies have shown that very young children and people with frontal lobe damage are unable to make this shift and will continue to sort cards based on the first rule. In this experiment, instead of having the rule explicitly explained to them, participants quickly understood the rule for sorting the cards based on the experimenter's responses. Once the first rule was learned, the experimenter secretly changed the rule and participants had to learn the new rule. The ability to move from the old rule to the new rules is an important characteristic of executive functioning. Individuals who can switch from one rule to another are initially slower to react and make more errors relative to their origin...... middle of paper ......ult to read when we're talking specifically about the neuroscience side of things. This part of the article requires a much higher level of understanding than I currently have and here, honestly, I have been unable to summarize it because I don't even understand what she is trying to say. However, it seems very important. One of my main criticisms of this research is that I see absolutely no reason to conduct it. I see no benefit to the world other than acquiring knowledge for the sake of knowledge. The article didn't talk about how to help people with executive function difficulties until the very end, and even then it was only a small part of the conclusion . This kind of purely theoretical research makes me angry because great minds waste their time only to have their research learned and then forgotten by some poor student who actually wants to do something with his life..