Date Presented 03/27/20
Our results show that a slower response speed, not accuracy, on executive function (EF) tasks is related to better social interaction in school-age children with ASD. Children with ASD reduce their response speed to maintain good accuracy. Therefore, the response speed could be a correlate of social motivation and communication for school-age children with ASD and should be included in their evaluation for better intervention planning.
Primary Author and Speaker: Yen-Ting Yu
Contributing Authors: Chien-Ho Lin, Ching-Lin Hsieh, Cheng-Chun Kuei-Cheng, Kuan-Lin Chen
PURPOSE: Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction, which may be related to their poor executive function (EF). EF refers to an umbrella of cognitive processes, including cognitive flexibility, inhibition control, and working memory. Children with ASD with EF deficit exhibit inflexibility, poor inhibition, and inferior working memory, which may lead to their social interaction difficulties, such as poor impulse control and an inability to deal with multiple social information inputs. Therefore, understanding the relation between EF and social interaction can help clarify the role of EF in the social interaction difficulties of children with ASD for better clinical practice. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relations between EF and social interaction in school-aged children with ASD.
DESIGN: This study was an observational cohort study. School-aged children with a diagnosis of ASD were excluded if they had neurological dysfunction, chromosomal abnormality, or uncorrectable visual or hearing impairments, or if they were unable to follow orders and complete all procedures.
METHOD: EF and the social interaction of the recruited school-aged children with ASD were respectively assessed with the computerized dimensional change card sort (DCCS) task and the social responsiveness scale, second edition (SRS-2) −school-age form. The DCCS measures the accuracy (ACC) and reaction time (RT) in 6 single (one sorting dimension) and 1 mixed (two alternative sorting dimensions) blocks. The SRS-2 consists of five subscales (i.e., social awareness, social cognition, social communication, social motivation, and restricted interests and repetitive behavior) to capture children’s social interactions in daily contexts via their proxies. Correlation analysis was applied to examine if the DCCS variables were the correlates of the SRS-2 subscale and total scores.
RESULTS: A total of 112 children with ASD (101 boys) aged 73 to 145 months and their caregivers participated in this study. The ACC in the single (0.90 ± 0.11) and mixed (0.84 ± 0.12) blocks were not significantly related to any T scores of the SRS-2 (r = −0.15 to 0.03, p = 0.12 to 0.99). The RTs in both the single (1525.7 ± 825.8 milliseconds) and mixed (1728.8 ± 842.7 milliseconds) blocks were significantly correlated with the social motivation T score (r = −0.22 and −0.29, p < 0.05) and SRS-2 total T score (r = −0.21 and −0.20, p < 0.05). The RT in the single blocks was related to the social communication T score (r = −0.20, p < 0.05). The results showed that children who have shorter RT in the DCCS have more difficulties in social motivation and communication in their daily contexts.
CONCLUSION: Our correlational results indicated that a slower response speed, not lower accuracy, in the EF task was correlated with better social interaction in daily contexts in school-aged children with ASD, possibly because such children reduce their response speed to maintain good accuracy, trading off between accuracy and response speed. A slower response speed indicates better impulse control of processing multiple dimensional information in the EF task, which may help children with ASD to better participate in smooth turn-taking conversation and interactions with their peers. Response speed seems to be more important than accuracy in EF tasks for school-aged children. Interestingly, in preschool children, accuracy has been found to be more important than response speed in previous studies. It is recommended that response speed be included in the assessment for school-aged children with ASD so that better interventions can be designed in clinical practice.
References
Constantino, J., & Gruber, C. (2012). Social responsiveness scale–second edition (SRS-2). Torrance: Western Psychological Services.
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Dichter, G. S., Radonovich, K. J., Turner-Brown, L. M., Lam, K. S., Holtzclaw, T. N., & Bodfish, J. W. (2010). Performance of children with autism spectrum disorders on the dimension-change card sort task. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 40(4), 448-456. Doi: 10.1007/s10803-009-0886-1
