Cognitive Flexibility in Adults with High Functioning Autism by Bogte et al. (2008) - Article

Researchers are agreed that both social inadequacy and a deficit in executive functioning are both large factors which encompass autism. The main aim of this study focuses on investigating cognitive flexibility, more specifically response inhibition, set shifting, and motor presetting in regards to High Functioning Autism (HFA). Additionally a priori analysis was conducted by investigating the effects of the stimulus probability on performance. The authors mention the failure of previous studies in this area. Earlier studies failed to mention the patient’s medication status and thus failed to control for it. Additionally, these earlier studies often used experiment groups with varying age ranges. The authors generate four questions:

1. Is HFA associated with problems presetting the motor system in favor of the most common response type

2. Is HFA associated with weak set shifting

3. Is HFA associated with weak response inhibition

4. Is HFA associated with sensitivity for the given stimulus probability

Procedure

The sample consisted of 23 adults with HFA, and a control group of 32 typically functional individuals. The task consisted of a computer based variant of the Sternberg reaction time paradigm. The task presented participants with a set of letters to be memorized and then another set was displayed. If the participant recognized an item from the memory set in the display set, they gave a ‘yes’ response, otherwise they gave a ‘no’ response. The baseline condition consisted of 50% of the trials requiring a ‘no’ response; the response bias condition consisted of 75% of trials requiring a ‘no’ response. Each condition consisted of 64 trials.

Results and discussion

The aim of this study was to examine elements of cognitive flexibility, mainly set shifting, response inhibition, presetting, and a priori planning in individuals with HFA. Results show that participants with HFA experienced no deficit in response inhibition and the ability to change the response set. Despite this, there was a slow speed of performance found in participants with HFA, in particular those on medication. This slowness in speed may have been a contributing factor to cognitive flexibility deficit found in earlier studies which did not control for it. The study identifies a possible ceiling effect caused by an overall slowness of responses.