Cognitive shifting as a predictor of progress in social understanding in high-functioning adolescents with autism: a prospective study.

The team followed 30 high-functioning autistic teens in a residential school for two years.

They gave each teen a card-sort test to measure cognitive shifting.

They also tracked social understanding lessons and tested social comprehension twice.

Teens who scored high on shifting gained far more social understanding than peers.

Full-scale IQ did not predict gains; only flexibility mattered.

The gap between strong and weak shifters widened each year.

Patton et al. (2020) later showed the same link holds for younger kids. They used a parent checklist and still found flexibility drove social skills.

Matson et al. (2013) looked like a contradiction: their autistic teens failed shifting tests. The twist is they used a reading task, not social learning, so flexibility problems show up only when the task is unrelated to social goals.

Laermans et al. (2025) now embeds shifting inside a four-step brain-cognition-behavior chain. Their model keeps flexibility central but shows it works together with empathy and brain networks.

You can spot teens who will benefit most from social groups by giving a five-minute card-sort.

Start flexibility games—category switches, rule-change Uno—before heavy social training.

Pair strong shifters with peer mentors and give extra visual scripts to weak shifters so no one falls behind.