The lack of everyday application of traditional tests is known as low ecological validity. Behavioural
The Behavioural Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome (BADS) was designed to address the problems of traditional tests and evaluate the everyday problems arising from DES. BADS is designed around six subtests and ends with the Dysexecutive Questionnaire (DEX). These tests assess executive functioning in more complex, real-life situations, which improves their ability to predict day-to-day difficulties of DES. The six tests are as follows:Rule Shift Cards - Assesses the subjects ability to ignore a prior rule after being given a new rule to follow. Action Program - This test requires the use of problem solving to accomplish a new, practical task. Key Search - This test reflects the real-life situation of needing to find something that has been lost. It assesses  the patients ability to plan how to accomplish the task and monitor their own progress. Temporal Judgment - Patients are asked to make estimated guesses to a series of questions such as, "how fast do racehorses gallop?". It tests the ability to make sensible guesses. Zoo Map - Tests the ability to plan while following a set of rules. Modified Six Elements - This test assesses the subjects ability to plan, organize and monitor behaviour.The Dysexecutive Questionnaire (DEX) is a 20-item questionnaire designed to sample emotional, motivational, behavioural and cognitive changes in a subject with DES.
Controversy
Some researchers have suggested that DES is mislabelled as a syndrome because it is possible for the symptoms to exist on their own. Also, there is not a distinct pattern of damage that leads to the syndrome. Not all patients with frontal lobe damage have DES and some patients with no damage at all to the frontal lobe exhibit the necessary pattern of symptoms. This has led research to investigate the possibility that executive functioning is broken down into multiple processes that are spread throughout the frontal lobe. Further disagreement comes from the syndrome being based on Baddeley and Hitchs model of working memory and the central executive, which is a hypothetical construct.The vagueness of some aspects of the syndrome has led researchers to test for it in a non-clinical sample. The results show that some dysexecutive behaviours are part of everyday life, and the symptoms exist to varying degrees in everyone. For example, absent-mindedness and lapses in attention are common everyday occurrences for most people. However, for the majority of the population such inattentiveness is manageable, whereas patients with DES experience it to such a degree that daily tasks become difficult. See also
ADHD
Schizophrenia


== References ==