If you want to learn more about executive functions, we recommend reading the following articles:

Hot and cold executive functions from neuropsychological assessment

Neuropsychology of executive functions and their importance in education

Executive functions are a set of skills necessary for planning, making decisions, allowing self-monitoring during the execution of tasks, favoring the process of inhibiting automatic responses, allowing us to attend to relevant stimuli, prioritize, solve problems, show verbal fluency, follow instructions, among other functions.

Below we will explain two complementary tests with a long history that allow the evaluation of executive functions, both in children, adolescents and adults.

✅ The Test de los Senderos (TESEN): is a visual-motor planning test that can be used in adolescent and adult patients (from 16 years of age, to be more specific). For this reason, it is a test that allows, directly and indirectly, the measurement of relevant areas related to executive functions, such as the ability to plan, memorize, mental flexibility, alternation, sustained attention, ability to inhibit automatic responses, prospective memory, perceptual processing speed, and fluency in terms of motor responses.

✅ Five-Digit Test (FDT): a test that allows the measurement of areas related to processing speed, access to verbal concepts, sustained attention, automation, learning, active inhibition of spontaneous responses and alternation between two different mental operations. The Five-Digit Test offers the advantage of being able to be applied to children, adolescents and adults (specifically from 7 years of age onwards).

The evaluation of executive functions, both the Trails Test (TESEN) and the Five Digits Test (FDT) is an evaluation that allows the professional to focus on the detection of neurocognitive problems, detection of learning problems, memory problems, planning problems, attentional difficulties and to globally understand the efficiency of the executive functioning of the patient evaluated.