by Sona Ahuja, Sadhna Sharma
Paper published in MIER Journal of Educational Studies, Trends & Practices
November 2015, Vol. 5, No. 2 pp. 212 -224
Consciousness is evolving as a single solution to a large number of academic as well as behavioral problems. It has been found to predict academic achievement (Brazdau & Mihai, 2011) and is also related to creativity, intelligence, perception, receptivity, attention, comprehension (Sharma, 2008 & Grossberg, 1999) and transformational leadership qualities (Chauhan & Sharma, 2013).
Presently, it is a debatable issue whether to include consciousness, which has been declared as the loudest mental phenomenon (Baars, 1997) in the domain of executive functioning or not. Executive functioning is associated with higher-order mental abilities which are required to connect past experiences with the present ones and which are required to strategically manage oneself and one’s resources.
Executive functions including mental abilities such as working memory, reasoning ability, problem-solving, inhibitory control, task flexibility, and cognitive flexibility are significant factors for students’ learning and academic achievement. The present empirical study underlines the correlation and causal relationship between consciousness and two important dimensions of executive functioning – cognitive flexibility and self-regulation.
The strength of the functional relationship among these three reveals the predictive ability of consciousness for cognitive flexibility and self-regulation through regression analysis.