Flexibility in autism during unpredictable shifts of socio-emotional stimuli. Investigation of group and sex differences.

Abstract

Considering the mixed nature of reports of flexibility difficulties in autism, we hypothesized that a task that more closely resembles the challenges faced in real life would help to assess these difficulties. Autistic and typically developing (TD) adults performed an online Emotional Shifting Task (EST), involving non-explicit unpredictable shifts of complex socio-emotional stimuli, and the Task Switching Task (TST), involving explicit predictable shifts of simple character stimuli. Switch cost (i.e., the difference in performance between Shift and Non-Shift conditions) was larger in the autistic group than in the comparison group for the EST but not for the TST. Females responded faster than males in the EST. On the TST, TD males responded faster than TD females, whereas there was a female advantage in the autistic group. Our findings suggest that factors such as predictability, explicitness of the shift rule, stimulus type as well as sex could play a critical role in flexibility difficulties in autism.