- By Isaac
- Van Wesep
What Is the Minnesota Executive Function Scale (MEFS®)?
The Minnesota Executive Function Scale (MEFS®) is a direct, performance-based assessment of executive function for children from age 2 through adulthood. Instead of asking a parent or teacher to rate a child’s behavior, it asks the child to complete a short sorting game, measuring working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility in about 5 minutes. It was developed by Drs. Stephanie Carlson and Philip David Zelazo at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development.
How the MEFS® works
The child plays a card-sorting game on a tablet or computer. Each level gives a rule, such as “sort by color,” then changes it. To succeed, the child has to hold the rule in mind (working memory), resist sorting the old way (inhibitory control), and switch to the new rule (cognitive flexibility). The game adapts to the child’s age and performance, so a 3-year-old and a 7-year-old each get levels that fit them.
The story behind the MEFS®
The MEFS® grew out of decades of research on how children learn to control their own thinking. Its core task, the Dimensional Change Card Sort, was introduced by Dr. Zelazo and colleagues in 1995 and became one of the most widely used measures of executive function in child development research (Frye, Zelazo, & Palfai, 1995; Zelazo, 2006). Drs. Carlson and Zelazo then built it into a scaled assessment with levels from toddlerhood to adulthood, with support from the National Institutes of Health. An earlier version of the MEFS card-sorting task was also adapted for the NIH Toolbox, a set of measures used in research nationwide.
Why measure EF directly?
Rating scales ask an adult how a child usually behaves. They are useful, but they reflect the rater’s perspective and are better at spotting problems than strengths. A direct assessment like the MEFS® shows what the child can actually do on a standard task, scored the same way for every child. That makes it possible to compare a child with others the same age and to track growth over time.
What the results tell you
The MEFS® is normed on 100,000+ people: more than 102,000 children ages 2 to 18 and more than 5,700 adults. A child’s score is compared with children the same age, so a percentile shows where they stand today. Because EF grows quickly in early childhood and responds to practice, the score is a snapshot of current skills, not a fixed label or a diagnosis. Families and teachers can use it to choose the right kind of support and to see progress at the next check.
For Bright Horizons families
Your center has invited you to measure your child’s EF with the MEFS®. Use the link in your invitation email to start. It takes about 5 minutes, and your child will experience it as a game. You can use a tablet or a computer. Choose a quiet place with no distractions, and let your child complete every task on their own: please don’t help, even if a level seems hard. That way the result shows what your child can do.
To learn more about EF itself, read Executive Function: The Skills Behind Life and Learning and The Science of Executive Function.
References
Frye, D., Zelazo, P. D., & Palfai, T. (1995). Theory of mind and rule-based reasoning. Cognitive Development, 10(4), 483–527.
Reflection Sciences. (2026). MEFS® Technical Report (v. 07.26.26).
Zelazo, P. D. (2006). The Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS): A method of assessing executive function in children. Nature Protocols, 1(1), 297–301.
