Reduced empathy and alexithymic traits are common across the autism spectrum, but it is unknown whether this is also true for intellectually advanced adults with autism spectrum disorder. The aim of this study was to examine whether college students with autism spectrum disorder experience difficulties with empathy and alexithymia, and whether…

Thirty to 80% of children with autism spectrum disorder also have symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Many children with autism spectrum disorder and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder experience difficulties carrying out goal-directed behaviors, particularly when it comes to inhibiting responses. The aim of this study was…

Objectives: The aim of the study is to distinguish between perceptuomotor and cognitive inflexibility as the source of set-switching difficulties in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Methods: Seventeen adolescents with ASD and 17 neurotypical controls were presented with a computerized sequencing game using colored shapes. The sequence…

Sleep disturbance and executive dysfunction have been widely reported in children with autism spectrum disorder. While the positive impacts of physical activity on sleep quality and cognition are documented in children with typical development, similar studies in children with autism spectrum disorder are scarce. The objective of this study was to…

Parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are at risk for high stress levels. Multiple child factors have been identified as predictors of stress in parents of children with ASD, but factors associated with stress in parents of children with ASD and comorbid intellectual disability (ASD-ID) are not well understood. This study…

Understanding that people's ideas may be false is a challenging step in Theory of Mind (ToM) development, which is accomplished around the age of 4-5 years old by typically developing (TD) children. False-belief attribution remains difficult beyond this age for certain clinical populations, such as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), where delays in…

Adults with autism spectrum disorder often experience co-occurring mental health problems such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity-disorder, as well as impairments in executive function. Sluggish cognitive tempo, a cluster of behaviors including slow processing, daydreaming, and mental fogginess, has been shown to be associated with…

Background: Academic challenges such as losing/not turning in assignments, misplacing materials, and inefficient studying are common in middle-school students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) without intellectual disability. Deficits in organization, planning, prioritizing, memory/materials management, and studying skills [i.e. academic…

We re-evaluate conclusions about disfluency production in high-functioning forms of autism spectrum disorder (HFA). Previous studies examined individuals with HFA to address a theoretical question regarding speaker- and listener-oriented disfluencies. Individuals with HFA tend to be self-centric and have poor pragmatic language skills, and should…

Little is known about the relation between cognitive processes and imagination and whether this relation differs between neurotypically developing children and children with autism. To address this issue, we administered a cognitive task battery and Karmiloff-Smith's drawing task, which requires children to draw imaginative people and houses. For…

Researchers have proposed that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized, at least in part, by executive function (EF) difficulties associated with the integrity of the frontal lobe. Given the paucity of research regarding EFs in young adults with high functioning ASD (HF-ASD), this research involves an examination of various indices of EF…

Formal thought disorder (FTD) is a disruption in the flow of thought and a common feature in psychotic disorders and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Executive dysfunction has often been associated with FTD, yet for ASD convincing evidence is lacking. This study investigated FTD and three core executive functions in 50 young children and…

The objectives of this study were to examine (a) differences in figurative language, analogical reasoning, executive functions (EF), theory of mind (ToM), and local/ central coherence (LCC) of children with high-functioning autism (HFA; n 32) and typically developing (TD; n 32) children; (b) improvement of figurative language using dynamic…

There has been an increasing interest in possible connections between autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and schizophrenia in the last decade. Neuropsychological comparison studies have, however, been few. The present study examined similarities and differences in intellectual and executive functioning between adults with Asperger syndrome (AS) and…

Previously, a total of 121 children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) performed an adaptive working memory (WM)-training, an adaptive flexibility-training, or a non-adaptive control (mock)-training. Despite overall improvement, there were minor differences between the adaptive and mock-training conditions. Moreover, dropout was relatively…