1. Are Executive Control Functions Related to Autism Symptoms in High-Functioning Children?
- Author
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Gregory L. Wallace, Anne della Rosa, Bryan Harrison, Lauren Kenworthy, and David O. Black
- Subjects
Male ,Adolescent ,Mind-blindness ,Neuropsychological Tests ,behavioral disciplines and activities ,Developmental psychology ,Executive Function ,Fluency ,Rating scale ,mental disorders ,Developmental and Educational Psychology ,medicine ,Humans ,Attention ,Child ,Cognition ,medicine.disease ,Executive functions ,Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology ,Child Development Disorders, Pervasive ,Asperger syndrome ,Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health ,Autism ,Female ,Cognition Disorders ,Psychology ,Executive dysfunction - Abstract
Background: Linking autism symptoms to cognitive abilities can expand phenotypic descriptions and facilitate investigations into the etiology and treatment of this multiplex disorder. Executive dysfunction is one of several potential cognitive phenotypes in autism. Method: Archival clinical data on 89 children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders and administered a large neuropsychological battery were evaluated for relationships between executive functioning and autism symptoms. Results: Significant relationships between both laboratory tasks and behavior rating scales of executive functions and autism symptoms were identified. Multiple regression analyses revealed that measures of semantic fluency, divided auditory attention, and behavioral regulation were significantly correlated with autism symptoms, even after accounting for the variance from correlated “nuisance variables,” such as vocabulary and age. Conclusions: Executive dysfunction is related to all three clusters of behavioral symptoms in A...
- Published
- 2009
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