IMPROVING THE ECOLOGICICAL VALIDITY OF EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING ASSESSMENT By NAOMI SAGE CHAYTOR

The members of the Committee appointed to examine the dissertation of NAOMI SAGE CHAYTOR find it satisfactory and recommend that it be accepted. ________________________________ Chair ________________________________ ________________________________ ________________________________ iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to acknowledge the guidance and support of my mentor, Dr. Maureen Schmitter-Edgecombe. Thank you for your dedication to this research project, as well as to my professional development. You have supported my research ideas and clinical interests throughout my training. I would also like to acknowledge Dr. Robert Burr for allowing me to collect data on his patients and for his practical support throughout this process. And to my committee, thank you for your helpful assistance and guidance with this project. I would also like to thank Dr. Michele York and Dr. Harvey Levin for their professional guidance and for allowing me to collect data at Baylor. And finally, I would like to thank Michael McDonell for his unconditional support of everything I do. Although studies have found significant relationships between executive functioning tests and measures of everyday cognitive skills, the magnitude of the relationships tend to be in the moderate range at best. The main objective of the current study was to investigate ways to improve the ecological validity of the neuropsychological assessment of executive functioning through the formal assessment of compensatory strategies and environmental cognitive demands. Factor analysis of the measures of everyday executive functioning was also conducted in order to determine if more specific relationships between tests and outcome could be identified. Results indicated that the group of executive functioning tests together (i.e. Association Test) accounted for 18-20 percent of the variance in everyday executive ability. The addition of measures of environmental cognitive demand and compensatory strategy use each significantly increased the variance in the everyday executive ability accounted for. In addition, at least three reliable executive factors were identified in this and other studies (i.e., Inhibition, Intentionality and Executive Memory). The current study adds to the literature on the ecological validity of executive functioning assessment v by highlighting the importance of extra-test variables when trying to understand the complex relationship between cognitive testing and real world performance.