Reading, Executive Function, and Anxiety

Do your students or loved ones:

• find it challenging to get started on a task that requires reading and writing?
• have difficulty with stamina, speed,
• have trouble understanding what they’ve read,
• find it hard to remember the directions/steps of an assignment at school?

If you are seeing any of these reading/writing problems, anxiety and underdeveloped executive function may be interfering with their productivity and motivation.

For students with reading struggles, there might also be executive functioning problems developing alongside the reading issues. Reading and writing can be a chore that never gets done, which can up their (and your) anxiety.

Reading requires students to put together their thoughts and strategies in a systematic way. They need to coordinate their executive functioning along with their reading. This includes a wide range of skills at school or at home/work…such as:

• self-regulating one’s thoughts and behavior
• self-monitoring how the process is going
• putting forth the effort needed to complete the task
• goal setting
• task planning
• organizing time
• following through with multi-step directions

When you consider how important the above skills are to learning anything, let alone learning something you struggle with, it’s no surprise that readers with weak executive function often feel frustrated or overwhelmed. They do everything they can to get out of the reading or writing task.

The role of stress/anxiety as related to literacy

How well do we perform when stressed out? When highly stressed or anxious, the stress response activates and executive function goes off line, hijacking the “thinking brain.” What may look like a reluctant or uncooperative student may actually be the stress response doing its job, resulting in behaviors that seem to be negative- like spacing out or saying “no” when it’s time to read or write.

When faced with a writing task, you may notice your students exhibit behaviors such as:

• Fight mode—crumble up work or throw stuff across the room
• Flight mode—ask to go to bathroom or get something to eat or “check” something. You find you have to literally sit next to them during reading or writing.
• Freeze mode—play dead (put one’s head down on desk or flop down somewhere) or appear frozen (deer in the headlights stare)

Many educators, researchers, and experts say, “Behavior is communication.” Students might avoid literacy tasks because they’re embarrassed about their skill deficits, fear making a mistake or have experienced previous failures with reading. Anxiety about the task can trigger negative self-talk such as, “I’m not good at reading or I’m stuck…I may as well quit.” In the absence of mindfulness or means for productive self-talk, students can quickly unravel and demonstrate a sense of “learned helplessness.”

What can teachers and parents do?

Avoidance and reluctance may stem from not only a lack of proficiency with reading but also gaps in executive function, metacognitive self-talk, self-regulation, and/or productive responses to stress/anxiety, among other factors.

So, it is essential for parents and teachers to begin by asking: How can I design reading to help my readers keep their thinking brain in charge? Where are the gaps and what support is needed?
Helping students decrease anxiety and build executive function isn’t something done a once a week or periodically.

Where can you start?

• Incorporate more of what the brain likes in your literacy time by providing:
  • choice of topic or book or how it is read
  • relevant, meaningful topics to the reader
  • multi-sensory experiences (i.e. act out the writing process with movement, provide visuals with directions/steps and have students repeat them back)
  • personalized reading strategies.
  • coaching and mindfulness techniques (i.e. slow deep breathing or some type of movement or mindfulness practice) enhance mood, behavior and motivation.