Planning/Prioritizing

A plan can be something we hold in our head (i.e., what we will make for dinner), or something external (i.e., an itinerary or blueprint).^​1​ The executive function of planning, however, is “generally defined as the process of formulating a sequence of operations intended to achieve a goal in an organized, strategic, and efficient manner.”^​2​

Prioritizing involves the ordering/organization of information based on it’s perceived importance or relevance. This can be in tasks (“What step do I need to do first?”), thought (i.e., being able to bring the most relevant information to the forefront of your mind, while filtering out less or not important information), and communication (i.e. people with executive dysfunction tend to ramble and take many tangents when they speak).

Across the Lifespan

“The model of planning processes presented above indicates that planning involves a complex, highly complex, set of operations. As a result, it is not surprising that planning skills develop rather slowly”^​3​

By around age 7, children are able to choose goals and make step-by-step goals to achieve them.^​4​ Planning and prioritization skills develop along with the brain, increasing throughout childhood and adolescence.²

In laboratory studies, older adults planning skills have been shown to decline with age, however, when tested on naturalistic tasks that they do in their real lives, they do not only show no decline in planning skills (generally speaking), but in fact tend to do better than younger adults. This has been attributed to the fact that with age comes “considerable experience in planning, for example scheduling several errands during the course of the day… Therefore planning performance may be relatively preserved in old age despite possible declines in some cognitive processes related to planning performance,”^​5​ such as working memory.^​6​

“More generally, across the life span, older adults acquire considerable experience in planning, for example in scheduling several errands during the course of the day (…) Therefore planning performance may be relatively preserved in old age despite possible declines in some cognitive processes related to planning performance”^​5​

“Accord- ingly, a recent meta-analysis of prospective memory tasks, which require the planning and execution of an intention to carry out a task (Henry, MacLeod, Phillips, & Crawford, 2004), indicates a substan- tial age-related deficit in plan execution on laboratory tasks, but an age-related benefit of the same magnitude in plan execution in natu- ralistic tasks. **Thus, it seems possible that age-related planning per- formance can be explained by differences in (cognitive) processes required for the planning tasks, depending on the familiarity of the elements of the task to be planned”^​5​

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