The Role of Executive Functioning in Predicting Social Competence in Children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Parent-noticed self-monitoring gaps forecast social problems in autistic grade-schoolers, so teach them to watch their own behavior first.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Fong et al. (2020) asked parents to fill out two checklists. One listed everyday executive-function slips. The other listed social-competence strengths and gaps.
The sample mixed grade-school kids with autism and typical peers. The team ran separate models for each group to see which EF habits predicted social problems.
What they found
For children with ASD, parent-rated self-monitoring gaps best predicted poor social knowledge. For typical children, working-memory slips mattered more.
In plain words, the social troublemakers were different in each group. A one-size EF fix will not fit all.
How this fits with other research
Myers et al. (2018) used the same parent form two years earlier. They linked metacognitive EF to daily living skills, not social knowledge. Clarisse narrows the lens and shows the social piece.
Kouklari et al. (2018) seems to disagree. Direct lab tests of EF did not predict social chat in 8- to 12-year-olds with ASD. The clash is about method: parent views catch real-life self-monitoring; lab tasks miss it.
Ko et al. (2024) widens the age range down. In preschool, EF explained more than half of autism-symptom severity. Clarisse picks up the story at grade school and hands it to teen work by Ivy et al. (2017), who tied EF to loneliness in high-functioning youth. The thread is clear: EF matters across ages, but the key skill changes.
Why it matters
You now have a road map. If a parent says, “My child never notices his own mistakes,” add self-monitoring drills to your social-skills program. Use video replay, self-graphing, or pause-and-check routines. For typical peers on your caseload, boost working-memory games instead. Match the EF target to the child, not the diagnosis alone.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
All children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience social difficulties but they differ with regard to the type and severity of their challenges. Potentially powerful interventions targeting social skills in children with ASD may have limited effectiveness if they are not tailored to the child's specific needs. One factor that may influence social competence is executive functioning (EF). EF may impact social competence by facilitating higher-order strategies such as emotional and cognitive regulation which are necessary for social interactions. Participants included 132 children and adolescents, aged 7-13, including 77 with ASD (M = 10.11, SD = 1.94), and 55 without ASD (M = 9.54, SD = 1.67). Caregivers completed the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Functioning, Version 2 (BRIEF-2) Parent Form, assessing everyday EF skills, and the Multidimensional Social Competence Scale (MSCS). Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted separately for the group without ASD and the group with ASD, with MSCS entered as the dependent variables and EF indices and scales of the BRIEF-2 as the main predictor variables. EF deficits in emotional control predicted poor emotion regulation for both children with and without ASD. For the group without ASD, better emotional control and initiation skills predicted empathic concern and social knowledge, respectively. Challenges in self-monitoring significantly predicted difficulties with social inferencing and social knowledge for children with ASD. The findings highlight the importance of targeting specific EF skills that contribute to various aspects of social competence to increase the effectiveness of interventions for children with ASD. Autism Res 2020, 13: 1856-1866. © 2020 International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals LLC LAY SUMMARY: We examined whether parents' ratings of their children's higher-order thinking skills (e.g., paying attention, organizing and planning, initiating tasks, regulating emotions, self-monitoring) predicted social competence among children with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD). For children without ASD, emotional control and initiation skills were strongly linked to their displays of empathy and social knowledge, respectively. For children with ASD, their abilities to be aware of their own behaviors and its impact on others were strongly related to their ability to interpret social cues and their social knowledge. For both groups, the ability to regulate their emotions were important predictors of their ability to modulate their emotions in social contexts.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2020 · doi:10.1002/aur.2350