Patterns of Age-Related Cognitive Differences in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

Little is known about age-related cognitive differences in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, given the overlap in cognitive impairments in ASD to those seen in typical aging, it is possible that adults with ASD will face even greater cognitive difficulties as they age. The current study used a cross-sectional design to examine age-related cognitive differences in adults with ASD and age and IQ-matched adults with typical development (age range 30-67 years). Results indicated that both age and diagnosis were related to poorer cognitive performance. However, adults with ASD exhibited pronounced age effects on measures related to executive functioning compared to adults with typical development, suggesting that aging in ASD may disproportionately affect specific cognitive processes.

Executive Functioning in 60+ Autistic Males: The Discrepancy Between Experienced Challenges and Cognitive Performance

“…So, like in the 2012 Geurts and Vissers paper, Powell et al (2017) show that in autistic adults' age may disproportionally affect specific cognitive functions while other cognitive functions are unaffected. However, while Powell et al (2017) argue that complex cognitive functions are mainly at risk for this accelerated aging effect, this hypothesis does not align with the findings of any of the previous studies. The inconsistency in the observed age-related patterns could be due to the chosen statistical analyses, but as there were many other methodological differences (age-range, IQ-range, type of EF tasks used, age of ASC diagnosis) it is hard to determine which factor(s) caused the observed difference in findings.…”

“…However, the main analyses are the regression analyses were the predictor variables included group (ASC/COM), age (mean-centred), and the age by group interaction term similar to Geurts and Vissers (2012) and Lever and Geurts (2016a, b). To explore whether the pattern of findings change when IQ was taken into account, the regression analyses were rerun with IQ (i.e., please note that WMI and PSI are now excluded as the dependent measures) entered in the first step of the regression analyses (see for a similar approach Powell et al 2017). Pearson correlations (one-tailed) were calculated for exploratory purposes between (1) self-and proxy BRIEF-A and (2) subjective and objective measurements.…”

“…To our knowledge only seven papers reported on objective clinical EF measures of a (clinically) diagnosed ASC adult sample of which approximately 50% of the participants was over 45 years of age (Braden et al 2017;Davids et al 2016;Geurts and Vissers 2012;Lever and Geurts 2016a;Powell et al 2017;Tse et al 2019;Walsh et al 2019). The findings, however, are inconsistent.…”

“…This was irrespective of having an ASC diagnosis or not. Also, findings from a recent small study including ASC adults across a wide age range (Powell et al 2017; N ASC = 29, N non-ASC = 30, age 30-67 years) suggest that IQ might be of relevance. When including IQ as a covariate, similar agerelated differences emerged for processing speed and verbal episodic memory.…”

Cognitive mechanisms of inhibitory control deficits in autism spectrum disorder

“…Yet, because proactive control is slower to develop in individuals with ASD, it does not contribute significantly to stopping ability until later in childhood (~8.7 years). Delays in proactive control development in ASD thus help account for differences in response inhibition emerging at age ~10.7 years and subsequently widening with increasing age as documented in a study of 30–70 year old individuals with ASD (Powell, Klinger, & Klinger, ).…”