A review of studies on the executive functions of students with Learning Disorder

Specific learning disabilities are one of the main problems of students in the fields of writing, reading and mathematics, which have been paid special attention by researchers and educational psychologists. Various studies and theories in this field have considered the dysfunction of executive functions as one of the important causes of this disorder. In this regard, providing a comprehensive picture of the scope of research in this area can pave the way for researchers interested in studying this construct. The present study is a review study that examines the research projects conducted in the field of EF of primary school students during the years, 2011 till 2019. 40 scientific-research articles have been extracted from internal (Iranian) scientific databases. Results showed all articles, while confirmed the executive functions deficits in students with Specific learning disabilities (SLD), their research method mainly focused on experimental research and investigated the effects of on cognitive dimensions of executive functions on 3th to 5th grades. Furthermore, working memory, sustained attention, response inhibition and organization-planning have attracted allocated the most attention as dimensions of EF. It is suggested that future research consider other components of this construct such as the emotional aspects.