Impairments on "open-ended" executive function tests in autism.
Impairments on "open-ended" executive function tests in autism.
复制标题
自闭症“开放式”执行功能测试的损伤。
DOI：
10.1002/aur.78
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发表时间：
2009
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
White SJ
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
White SJ
自闭症的执行功能(EF)理论最近得到了越来越多研究的支持。然而，执行障碍并不总是很容易被始终如一地识别出来，因此人们设计了新颖的“生态有效”测试，这些测试利用了与日常行为相关并具有代表性的现实生活场景。其中许多任务的一个特点是，它们给参与者呈现的是一种“结构不良”或“无限制”的情况。在这里，我们调查了开放式程度更高的任务可能被证明对检测自闭症的执行障碍更敏感的可能性。在EF的一系列认知测试中，45名自闭症谱系障碍(ASD)儿童与27名年龄和智商匹配的对照组儿童进行了比较。在一半的任务上发现了群体差异，在更开放的任务上发现的损害程度最大。在一项简单的任务控制条件下，ASD组的表现也更差。对任务绩效的详细考虑表明，ASD组倾向于创造更少的自发策略，表现出更多的特殊行为，这在更开放的任务中尤其不利。这些行为在额叶受累的神经科患者的研究中已有报道，初步证据表明科学领域之间存在联系。然而，我们认为，这种行为同样可能是因为对实验者在开放式测试情景中提出的内隐要求缺乏理解，这是由于这些儿童的社交困难。
The executive function (EF) theory of autism has received much support recently from a growing number of studies. However, executive impairments have not always been easy to identify consistently and so novel “ecologically valid” tests have been designed which tap into real‐life scenarios that are relevant to and representative of everyday behavior. One characteristic of many of these tasks is that they present the participant with an “ill‐structured” or “open‐ended” situation. Here, we investigated the possibility that tasks with greater degrees of open‐endedness might prove more sensitive to detecting executive impairment in autism. Forty‐five children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were compared to 27 age‐ and IQ‐matched control children on a range of cognitive tests of EF. Group differences were found on half of the tasks, with the greatest degree of impairment detected on the more open‐ended tasks. The ASD group also performed more poorly on a simple control condition of a task. Detailed consideration of task performance suggested that the ASD group tended to create fewer spontaneous strategies and exhibit more idiosyncratic behavior, which particularly disadvantaged them on the more open‐ended tasks. These kinds of behaviors have been reported in studies of neurological patients with frontal lobe involvement, prima facie suggesting a link between the scientific fields. However, we suggest that this behavior might equally result from a poor understanding of the implicit demands made by the experimenter in open‐ended test situations, due to the socio‐communicative difficulties of these children.