Mind the Gap: Executive Function Is Associated with the Discrepancy Between Cognitive and Adaptive Functioning in Autistic Children Without Cognitive Delay.
Yael Braverman, Sarah R Edmunds, Ingrid Hastedt and 1 others
PMID 38778001WHAT IT FOUND
Emotional control problems were linked to a larger gap between autistic children's cognitive ability and everyday social skills, even when cognition was average.
The study was cross-sectional, so it cannot show that improving emotional control would close that gap.
Key findings
01Older school-age autistic children had lower adaptive skills relative to age expectations and larger gaps between cognitive ability and adaptive skills.
02Emotional control difficulties were associated with a larger gap between cognitive ability and adaptive socialization skills in school-age children and four-year-olds.
03In the preschool cohort, adaptive skills and the cognitive-adaptive gap did not differ significantly between two- and four-year-old groups.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study was cross-sectional, so it cannot show that executive function causes later adaptive difficulties or that improving executive function will close the gap. Executive function was measured only by parent report, and lab-based executive function tasks were not used. The preschool group was small and had only two age points, so only large differences were likely to be detected. The samples were not representative in race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and sex assigned at birth. The two cohorts came from different studies and used different adaptive behavior scales and cognitive cutoffs, so the groups were not directly comparable.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that treating executive function or emotional control will reduce the difference between cognitive ability and adaptive skills. The study measured associations at one time point and did not test an intervention.