Stop and change: inhibition and flexibility skills are related to repetitive behavior in children and young adults with autism spectrum disorders.
Computer and live executive-function tests are equally hard for people with autism, so weak scores reflect true brain differences, not social anxiety.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team gave the kids and young adults with autism two kinds of executive-function tests.
One test ran on a computer. The same test was also given face-to-face by a person.
They measured how well each child could stop an action and shift rules. Then they scored repetitive behaviors with a parent checklist.
What they found
Scores were equally low in both the computer and live versions.
Poor inhibition and flexibility went hand-in-hand with more repetitive behaviors.
The social part of the live test did not make the deficit worse.
How this fits with other research
Iversen et al. (2021) pooled the participants and found the same medium link between weak executive skills and repetitive behaviors. Their meta-analysis includes this 2015 study, so the result is not a one-off.
Walley et al. (2005) looked earlier at inhibition in autism and said the trouble came from language problems, not autism itself. The new data do not clash; they just show the deficit holds even when language demands are kept the same in both test formats.
Gandhi et al. (2022) asked Grade 1-the teachers to rate executive functions. Teachers also saw big problems, proving the issue shows up at school, not just in the lab.
Why it matters
You can trust computerized EF tasks for autism assessments. The poor scores are real, not caused by social pressure. If a client has high repetitive behaviors, plan extra support for stopping and shifting. No need to avoid digital tools; they give the same information faster.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Across studies, analysis of performance on classic measures of executive functioning (EF) among individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) suggests that people with this disorder may be impaired only when tasks are experimenter-administered, but not when the same tasks are computer-administered. This would imply that the underlying cause of apparent executive dysfunction in ASD is a diminished ability to engage with another person/comprehend what another person expects, rather than a diminution of the control processes that typically underpin EF task performance. However, this suggestion is limited because, to our knowledge, no study has directly compared the equivalence of computer-administered and standard experimenter-administered versions of EF tasks that have been presented in counterbalanced order among a common sample of individuals with ASD. In the current study, 21 children with ASD and 22 age- and intelligence quotient (IQ)-matched comparison participants completed, in counterbalanced order, computerised and manual versions of both a planning task and a cognitive flexibility/set-shifting task. Contrary to expectation, results indicated that participants with ASD were equally impaired in terms of the key dependent variable on standard and computerised versions of both tasks. Practically, these results suggest that computer-administered and experimenter-administered versions of planning and set-shifting tasks are equivalent among individuals with ASD and can be used interchangeably in studies of EF among this population. Theoretically, these results challenge the notion that poor performance on EF tasks among school-aged children with ASD is only the result of a limited ability to engage with a human experimenter/comprehend socially presented rules.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2015 · doi:10.1002/aur.1311