Dysexecutive Syndrome - Symptoms - Cognitive Symptoms

Cognitive Symptoms

Cognitive symptoms refer to a person’s ability to process thoughts. Cognition primarily refers to memory, the ability to learn new information, speech, and reading comprehension. Deficits within this area cause many problems with every day life decisions.

One of the main difficulties for an individual with DES is planning and reasoning. Impaired planning and reasoning affect the individual's ability to realistically assess and manage the problems of every day living. New problems and situations may be especially poorly handled because of the inability to transfer previous knowledge to the new event. An individual that has DES may have a short attention span due to impairment in attentional control. This may alter the individual's ability to focus, and as such have difficulty with reading and following a storyline or conversation. For instance, they can easily lose track of conversations which can make it difficult to hold a meaningful conversation and may result in avoiding social interactions.

Individuals with DES will have very poor working memory and short term memory due to executive dysfunction. The dysfunction can range from mild and subtle to severe and obvious. There is a tremendous variability in the manifestations of executive dysfunction with strong influences often apparent from the afflicted person’s personality, life experiences and intellect. Individuals with DES may suffer from confabulation, which is the spontaneous reporting of events that never happened. This can affect their autobiographical memory. It is thought that patients may not be able to assess the accuracy of memory retrieval and therefore elaborate on implausible memories.

Individuals with dementia, delirium or other severe psychiatric illnesses combined with DES often have disturbed sleep patterns. Some will not recognize that it is night-time and may become upset when someone tries to correct them.