Neural Responses to a Putative Set‐shifting Task in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

While much progress has been made toward understanding the neurobiology of social and communication deficits associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), less is known regarding the neurobiological basis of restricted and repetitive behaviors (RRBs) central to the ASD diagnosis. Symptom severity for RRBs in ASD is associated with cognitive inflexibility. Thus, understanding the neural mechanisms underlying cognitive inflexibility in ASD is critical for tailoring therapies to treat this understudied yet pervasive symptom. Here we used a set‐shifting paradigm adopted from the developmental cognitive neuroscience literature involving flexible switching between stimulus categories to examine task performance and neural responses in children with ASD. Behaviorally, we found little evidence for group differences in performance on the set‐shifting task. Compared with typically developing children, children with ASD exhibited greater activation of the parahippocampal gyrus during performance on trials requiring switching. These findings suggest that children with ASD may need to recruit memory‐based neural systems to a greater degree when learning to flexibly associate stimuli with responses. Lay Summary Children with autism often struggle to behave in a flexible way when faced with unexpected challenges. We examined brain responses during a task thought to involve flexible thinking and found that compared with typically developing children, those with autism relied more on brain areas involved in learning and memory to complete the task. This study helps us to understand what types of cognitive tasks are best suited for exploring the neural basis of cognitive flexibility in children with autism. Autism Res 2020, 13: 1501–1515. © 2020 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Gray matter volume alteration is associated with insistence on sameness and cognitive flexibility in autistic youth

“…Our findings support that these factors may substantially contribute to cognitive flexibility beyond ASD diagnosis per se. Moreover, different cognitive flexibility tasks should be considered in future research to offer a more comprehensive picture, given that the performance can be greatly influenced by the level of task difficulty and the nature of the task (i.e., different demands on the different domains of executive functions) (Dirks et al, 2020; Geurts et al, 2009).…”

Atypical Neural Responses of Cognitive Flexibility in Parents of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…Furthermore, task difficulty is an factor in explaining the mixed findings (Geurts et al, 2009). For example, examiners may set a longer stimulus presentation time and interstimulus interval to ensure the high level of behavioral performance (Dirks et al, 2020). Another explanation is that in tests tapping executive functions explicitly providing a high degree of task instructions (like the task-switching paradigm), the examiner provides the necessary structure and organization to act as external executive control for the subject and reducing the requirement for executive functions (including cognitive flexibility) (Eylen et al, 2011).…”

Developmental Neuroimaging of Cognitive Flexibility: Update and Future Directions

“…Casey et al (2004) observed more prefrontal and parietal regions activated in adults compared with children (7-11 years), suggesting greater recruitment of these cortical regions across development. In Dirks et al (2020), the same task from Casey et al ( 2004) was used. The authors found typically developing children (7-12 years) had brain activation in the L posterior supramarginal gyrus/angular gyrus during shift trials.…”