A previous study found that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have better recall when they perform instructions (subject‐performed task [SPT]) than when they passively hear instructions (verbal task [VT]) in a working memory task for instructions, an effect that is called the SPT effect. This study explored whether the SPT effect exhibited by ASD children is caused by the movement component or by processing materials twice. More importantly, this study explored whether intelligence influences the SPT effect exhibited by ASD children. ASD children with three levels of intelligence (N = 56) and a control group, children with intellectual disability (ID) who had low intelligence but did not have ASD (N = 21), were asked to perform working memory tasks for instructions under VT, SPT and repeated (hearing the instruction twice) conditions. No significant difference in performance was observed between the VT and repeated conditions, regardless of the child's level of intelligence. ASD children with lower‐middle intelligence exhibited a smaller SPT effect than ASD children with upper‐middle intelligence. Critically, while ASD children with low intelligence did not exhibit the SPT effect, an ID group with equivalent low intelligence did show this effect. Therefore, these results show that the SPT effect for ASD children is caused by the movement component and is uniquely associated with a certain level of intelligence, namely, lower middle and higher levels of intelligence. Lay Summary In ASD children, the benefit of physically performing instructions for working memory performance is uniquely associated with a certain level of intelligence. Only ASD children with lower‐middle intelligence (and higher) benefit from physically performing instructions, and higher intelligence increases this benefit; ASD children with low intelligence do not show this benefit. This benefit in ASD children is attributed to the additional motoric code generated by physical performance.

Parental phubbing refers to parents being distracted by their phone during an interaction with their child. The present study investigated how parental phubbing relates to adolescents’ self-control through the mediators of parent–adolescent closeness and loneliness. The current study also compared the effects of maternal and paternal phubbing. Having a sibling may influence adolescent mental health and behaviors. Thus, this study also examined whether siblings attenuate the effects of parental phubbing on self-control. We recruited 670 adolescents to participate in our survey. Path analyses revealed that maternal phubbing had both direct and indirect effects on self-control through mother–adolescent closeness and loneliness. However, paternal phubbing had only a sequential indirect effect through father–adolescent closeness and loneliness. This shows that maternal and paternal phubbing have different effects on adolescents’ self-control. Multi-group comparisons revealed that the direct and indirect effects of maternal phubbing on self-control were non-significant for adolescents with siblings. Thus, siblings attenuated the adverse relationships between maternal phubbing and adolescent self-control.