Comparing Intellectual and Memory Abilities of Older Autistic Adults with Typically Developing Older Adults Using WAIS-IV and WMS-IV.
Venus W S Tse, Jason Crabtree, Shamsun Islam and 1 others
PMID 31440868WHAT IT FOUND
Older autistic adults scored lower than typically developing peers on processing speed and visual working memory.
Verbal comprehension, reasoning and other cognitive or memory scores were similar. This compared groups at one time, not decline over time.
Key findings
01Older autistic adults had lower processing speed than controls (control mean 111.30, autistic mean 99.39, p = 0.003).
02Older autistic adults had lower visual working memory than controls (control mean 116.40, autistic mean 102.86, p = 0.004).
03After memory scores were adjusted for general ability, visual working memory remained lower for autistic adults (control median 12.00, autistic median 8.00, p < 0.01).
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The study was cross-sectional, so it cannot show how cognition changes as autistic adults age. All participants were in the normal to high functional range and had no co-occurring intellectual disability, so the results may not apply to many autistic adults with intellectual disability. Many participants were under 60 years old, so the findings may reflect younger older adults rather than people with typical age-related decline. The autism and control groups were not balanced in gender, with more females in the control group and more males in the autism group. Autism diagnoses were based on self-report and were not verified with measures such as the AQ or ADOS. Each participant took about 3.5 hours to complete the assessments, so fatigue may have affected performance despite counterbalancing.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read lower processing speed and visual working memory as proof that ageing with autism causes dementia. The study compared different people at one time point, not the same people over time, and delayed memory was not significantly different.