Abstract
Cognitive control constrains mental operations to prioritize information that reaches conscious awareness and is essential to flexible, adaptive behavior under conditions of uncertainty. Cognitive control can be compromised by neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which is characterized by the presence of social and communicative deficits, and restricted interests/repetitive behaviors. Although prior investigations have attempted to elucidate the nature of cognitive control in ASD, whether there is an underlying information processing deficit associated with cognitive control remains unclear. This study challenged cognitive control in 15 high-functioning adults with ASD and 15 typically developing (TD) controls using three novel tasks designed to systematically manipulate uncertainty. We aimed to investigate the efficiency of cognitive control in sequential information processing, cognitive control of nonsequential information processing across a range of cognitive loads and cognitive control capacity under time constraint. Results demonstrated that the ASD group performed less efficiently on sequential and nonsequential information processing, and had reduced cognitive control capacity under time constraint relative to the TD group. These findings suggest that inefficient cognitive control of information processing may be a fundamental deficit in ASD.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 403-414 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | Autism Research |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Mar 1 2016 |
Funding
Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health under Award Numbers of R01 MH094305 and R21 MH083164. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. We would like to thank the Seaver Autism Center for participant recruitment and evaluation, including Latha Soorya, Ph.D., Evdokia Anagnostou, M.D., Alexander Kolevzon, M.D., David Grodberg, M.D., and Ting Wang, Ph.D. We would also like to thank Yunsoo Park for help with data collection, and Alfredo Spagna Ph.D. and Laura Egan Ph.D. for edits. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health under Award Numbers of R01 MH094305 and R21 MH083164. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. We would like to thank the Seaver Autism Center for participant recruitment and evaluation, including Latha Soorya, Ph.D., Evdokia Anagnostou, M.D., Alexander Kolevzon, M.D., David Grodberg, M.D., and Ting Wang, Ph.D. We would also like to thank Yunsoo Park for help with data collection, and Alfredo Spagna Ph.D. and Laura Egan Ph.D. for edits. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Keywords
- Autism
- Cognitive control
- Executive functions
- Information processing
- Information theory
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Clinical Neurology
- Genetics(clinical)
- General Neuroscience