Investigating Cognitive Flexibility in Preschool Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Oleg Zacharov,Rene Jürgen Huster,Anett Kaale

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.737631

Oleg Zacharov, Rene Jürgen Huster + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.737631

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Abstract

The current study investigated cognitive flexibility in preschool children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and those with typical development using the Reverse Categorization (RC) task and the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS) task. We further examined the relationship between non-verbal mental age (NVMA) and the performance on the two tasks. While no significant difference in performance on the RC task between the two groups was found, significantly more children in the typical developing group passed the DCCS task than children in the ASD group. NVMA was found to correlate with performance in both tasks in the typical developing group but not in the ASD group. When the children were matched on NVMA, no differences in task performance between the two groups were found. The current study found the disparity in performance in two groups on the RC and the DCCS tasks, hence illuminating the importance related to the selection of tasks when studying cognitive flexibility in preschool children with ASD. The study also cast some light on the involvement of NVMA in the performance on the RC and DCCS tasks.

Highlights

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by deficits in social communication and interaction, and restricted and repetitive behaviors and interests (American Psychiatric Association, 2013)
A chi-square analysis revealed no significant differences in performance on the Reverse Categorization (RC) task between the groups (X2 (1, n = 46) = 2.08, p = 0.149)
The current study investigated whether the performance of preschool children with ASD, as compared to children with typically developing (TD), was significantly different on two measures of cognitive flexibility, namely the RC task and Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS) task, which have been shown to have different difficulty levels

Summary

Introduction

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by deficits in social communication and interaction, and restricted and repetitive behaviors and interests (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). The term “spectrum” emphasizes that individuals with ASD exhibit wide-ranging levels of symptom severity in language and cognitive functioning. Behavioral difficulties observed in ASD, such as repetitive language and body movements, resistance to change, inflexible thinking, and problems with switching from one activity to another, are all potential indicators of impairment of cognitive flexibility (Smithson et al, 2013). Cognitive flexibility is one of the major components of executive functioning (EF) and can be described as the ability to switch from one task to another and to quickly adjust to changes in the environment (Diamond, 2013). Cognitive flexibility may be especially important for early academic and social achievements, as it has been shown to correlate with reading comprehension (Cole et al, 2014), abstract mathematics skills (Purpura et al, 2017), and social understanding (Bock et al, 2015)

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