Age Related Differences of Executive Functioning Problems in Everyday Life of Children and Adolescents in the Autism Spectrum

Abstract

Numerous studies investigated executive functioning (EF) problems in people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) using laboratory EF tasks. As laboratory task performances often differ from real life observations, the current study focused on EF in everyday life of 118 children and adolescents with ASD (6-18 years). We investigated age-related and individual differences in EF problems as reported by parents on the Behavioral Rating Inventory Executive Functions (BRIEF: Gioia et al. in Behavior rating inventory of executive function. Psychological Assessment Resources, Odesse 2000), and examined the association with autism severity. Inhibition problems were mostly found in the youngest group (6- to 8-year-olds), whereas problems with planning where more evident for 12- to 14-year-olds as compared to 9- to 11-year-olds. In a subsample of participants meeting the ADOS ASD cut-off criteria the age related differences in planning were absent, while problems with cognitive flexibility were less apparent in 15- to 18-year-olds, compared to 9- to 11-, and 12- to 14-year olds. EF problems surpassing the clinical cutoff were only observed in 20% (planning) to 51% (cognitive flexibility) of the children and adolescents, and no relation was found with ASD symptom severity. This underlines the heterogeneous nature of ASD.

Planning Skills in Autism Spectrum Disorder Across the Lifespan: A Meta-analysis and Meta-regression

“…Based on the discussion in non-experimental research whether an increase in planning difficulties in ASD can be found around adolescence (Van den Bergh et al 2014 versus Rosenthal 2013), we also inspected a quadratic relationship. We inserted age as a centered quadratic predictor, and found no support for a quadratic association between age and planning performance (Q AGE 2  = 2.62, p  = .11).…”

“…Hill 2004; Lopez et al 2005; Van den Bergh et al 2014). They have trouble organizing their daily life, maintaining (social) activities or coping with unregulated stretches of time (APA 2013; Ozonoff et al 2002).…”

“…They have trouble organizing their daily life, maintaining (social) activities or coping with unregulated stretches of time (APA 2013; Ozonoff et al 2002). Reports of caregivers also indicate planning deficits in the daily life of their child in comparison to their typically developing peers (Rosenthal et al 2013; Van den Bergh et al 2014). Reviewing research on planning performance on cognitive measures in ASD yields, however, inconsistent findings, resulting in a lack of clarity on the mastery of this skill in ASD.…”

Formal Thought Disorder and Executive Functioning in Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Old Leads and New Avenues

“…Bora and Murray 2014; Giakoumaki 2012; Ziermans 2013), although results have been mixed concerning their added use for predicting psychotic onset on an individual level (Fusar-Poli et al 2012; Lin et al 2013; Metzler et al 2016; Ziermans et al 2014). Executive dysfunction has also been historically linked to ASD (Pennington and Ozonoff 1996) and impairments have been widely reported (for a review see Russo et al 2007), albeit within the context of large individual and age-dependent differences (Pellicano 2010; van den Bergh et al 2014). Such individual differences in ASD may also partially account for the observed symptomatic overlap with psychotic disorders, but only a limited amount of studies have addressed this issue.…”

How and Why is Autism Spectrum Disorder Misdiagnosed in Adult Patients? - From Diagnostic Problem to Management for Adjustment -

“…Although deficits in executive functioning are not a specific feature of ASD individuals, they have more problems associated with executive dysfunction than healthy controls [108,129,130]. Furthermore, problems of executive dysfunction are not necessarily related to the severity of ASD symptoms [131][132][133]. Even though individuals, who at a young age were diagnosed with an ASD, are no longer met diagnostic criteria for ASD with age, these individuals still have more difficulty in several components of executive functioning (e.g., set-shifting and working memory) than healthy controls [130].…”