Individuals who have dysexecutive syndrome may have difficulties learning new rules in the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test

Dysexecutive syndromes include problems in the ability to attend to thoughts and memories just as it includes problems in paying attention to environmental stimuli. For example, take a minute to retrieve all of the words that you can think of that begin with the letter ‘A.’ This task requires you to search your memories and retrieve specific items. Perhaps, you developed a strategy to control what words you retrieved. For example, after trying to come up with just any words that begin with ‘A’ maybe you started to cue yourself with categories, such as foods that being with ‘A’ or animals that begin with ‘A.’ Or maybe you used two-letter cues, such as ‘AB,’ then ‘AC,’ then ‘AD.’ Such strategies are efficient because they facilitate the retrieval of different words and prevent the report of the same words. Patients with frontal lobe damage have difficulty directing their memory searches (Baldo and Shimamura 1998). They may report only five or six different words in a minute and often repeat the same words.