Supported employment improves cognitive performance in adults with Autism.
A real job can double as brain training for adults with autism.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers tracked two groups of adults with autism for 30 months. One group worked in supported jobs. The other group stayed unemployed.
Both groups took the same brain games every few months. The games measured planning, memory, and flexible thinking.
What they found
Only the workers got better at the games. Their scores rose by a medium amount.
The non-workers stayed the same. Work itself acted like brain training.
How this fits with other research
Schall et al. (2020) ran a stronger test with younger adults. They added extra autism supports to Project SEARCH. 73 percent of those young adults landed real jobs versus 17 percent of controls. Their gains were larger, but the idea matches: good jobs plus good support equal real growth.
Capio et al. (2013) tried the opposite path. They gave adults weekly computer brain drills. The adults also improved a lot on the same kinds of tests. One study used paychecks; the other used software. Both show autistic adult brains can still grow.
Su et al. (2008) looked at adults with intellectual disability, not autism. Employed adults again scored higher on attention and memory than unemployed peers. The pattern repeats: real work, real cognitive lift.
Why it matters
You can stop thinking of employment programs as just job training. They are also cognitive interventions. If your adult client lands a supported job, schedule follow-up probes on executive skills. You may see gains no clinic task ever produced. Push funders to keep placements open long term; the brain benefits need time to show.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a supported employment programme on measures of executive functions for 44 adults with autism, assessed at the beginning and the end of the programme period. The average length of time of the community employment was 30 months. METHODS: Based on their predominant work activity over the study period, participants were classified into two groups: supported employment and unemployed. At the start of the programme, the groups did not differ on any of the cognitive measures. RESULTS: Repeated measures analysis of variance (anova) demonstrated that by the end of the programme, the supported employment group showed higher scores for executive functions on variables of CANTAB (Spatial Span Task--span length recalled; Spatial Working Memory Task--strategy; Planning task 'Stockings of Cambridge'--problems solved in minimum moves; Planning task 'Stockings of Cambridge'--mean planning time) and other tasks such as Trail Making Test - part B, time; Matching Familiar Figures (first answer and errors). In contrast, the unemployed group showed no change over time in their cognitive performance. CONCLUSION: Results of this study suggested that vocational rehabilitation programmes have a beneficial impact upon cognitive performance in people with autism.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2007 · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2788.2006.00854.x