experiences patients were better able to make good decisions and plans. cognitive analytic therapy (cat) has also been used to help those with des. because individuals with this syndrome have trouble integrating information into their actions it is often suggested that they have programmed reminders delivered to a cell phone or pager. this helps them remember how they should behave and discontinue inappropriate actions. another method of reminding is to have patients write a letter to themselves. they can then read the letter whenever they need to. to help patients remember how to behave, they may also create a diagram. the diagram helps organize their thoughts and shows the patient how they can change their behaviour in everyday situations. the use of auditory stimuli has been examined in the treatment of des. the presentation of auditory stimuli causes an interruption in current activity, which appears to aid in preventing "goal neglect" by increasing the patients' ability to monitor time and focus on goals. given such stimuli, subjects no longer performed below their age group average iq. 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 hitch's 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.