Occupational therapy practitioners assess executive function and develop intervention plans to facilitate improved community living outcomes. Executive function is “a collection of top-down control processes used when going on automatic or relying on instinct or intuition would be ill-advised, insufficient, or impossible”(Diamond, 2013). Unfortunately, it can be incredibly challenging to assess executive function in the home environment when relying on skilled observation of task performance in a familiar place. Skilled observation without the integration of performance-based testing may even result in the assessment of procedural memory instead of executive function in the home (Burns & Neville, 2016).  Furthermore, relying entirely on paper-and-pencil type assessments can be problematic as these often focus primarily on impairments on not how the impairments influence performance in the “real world.”

The Multiple Errands Test was originally developed in 1991 by Shallice and Burgess. Since this initial study, several context-specific versions have emerged in the literature (Rotenberg et al., 2020). The Multiple Errands Test Home Version (MET-Home) assesses how executive dysfunction manifests during daily activities in the home environment. It is a valid and reliable tool (Burns et al., 2019) that can be incorporated into practice (e.g., home health care, discharge planning). The purpose of this session is to provide training and resources to practitioners seeking to learn how to integrate the MET-Home into practice.

Areas of Executive Function

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References

Burns, S. P., Dawson, D. R., Perea, J. D., Vas, A. K., Pickens, N. D., Plata, Carlos Marquez de la, & Neville, M. (2019). Associations between self-generated strategy use and MET-Home performance in adults with stroke. Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, p1-p15. https://10.1080/09602011.2019.1601112

Burns, S. P., Dawson, D. R., Perea, J. D., Vas, A., Pickens, N. D., & Neville, M. (2019). Development, Reliability, and Validity of the Multiple Errands Test Home Version (MET–Home) in Adults With Stroke. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 73(3), p1-p10. https://10.5014/ajot.2019.027755

Burns, S. C., & Neville, M. (2016). Cognitive assessment trends in home health care for adults with mild stroke. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 70(2), 7002290020p1-7002290020p8. https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.2016.016543

Diamond, A. (2013). Executive Functions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64(1), p135-p168. https://10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143750

Rotenberg, S., Ruthralingam, M., Hnatiw, B., Neufeld, K., Yuzwa, K. E., Arbel, I., & Dawson, D. R. (2020). Measurement Properties of the Multiple Errands Test: A Systematic Review. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, https://10.1016/j.apmr.2020.01.019