Contribution to the development of dynamic assessment tools of executive functions

The diploma thesis aims to present newly proposed methods of dynamic assessment of executive functions and evaluate their benefits through a pilot study. The theoretical section introduces dynamic approach to assessment and its methods and also describes the area of executive functions. The research part presents the proposed tests, focusing on the assessment of planning skills, cognitive flexibility, logical reasoning, working memory and self- monitoring. Their principle is the method of graduated prompts. The research sample used for the study consisted of thirty respondents aged from eight to fifteen years. The respondents were divided into two groups with the same number of participants. The first group included children with special educational needs, the second group involved intact respondents. The results of the study were evaluated quantitatively and qualitatively. Within the quantitative part, the number of necessary prompts and completed items was compared in both groups. The qualitative part focused on a detailed analysis of diagnostically relevant information obtained using the aforementioned methods. The results of the quantitative part of the research showed that the groups differ from each other neither in the number of graduated prompts required, nor in the number of completed..