Atypical Neural Responses of Cognitive Flexibility in Parents of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

Impaired cognitive flexibility has been repeatedly demonstrated in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). There is strong evidence for genetic involvement in ASD. First-degree relatives of individuals with ASD may show mild deficits in cognitive inflexibility. The present study investigated cognitive flexibility and its neuroelectrophysiological mechanisms in first-degree relatives of individuals with ASD to assess its potential familiality. Forty-five biological parents of individuals/children with ASD (pASD) and thirty-one biological parents of typically developing individuals/children (pTD), matched by gender, age, and IQ, were enrolled. The broad autism phenotype questionnaire (BAPQ) and cognitive flexibility inventory (CFI) were used to quantitatively assess autistic traits and cognitive flexibility in daily life, respectively. The task-switching paradigm was used to evaluate the behavioral flexibility in a structured assessment situation. Event-related potentials (ERPs) induced by this paradigm were also collected. Results showed that compared with the pTD group, the pASD group had lower CFI scores (t = −2.756, p < 0.01), while both groups showed an equivalent “switch cost” in the task-switching task (p > 0.05). Compared with the pTD group, the pASD group induced greater N2 amplitude at F3, F4, Fz, and C4 (F = 3.223, p < 0.05), while P3 amplitude and latency did not differ between the two groups. In addition, there was a significant negative correlation between the CFI total scores and BAPQ total scores in the pASD group (r = −0.734, p < 0.01). After controlling for age and IQ, the N2 amplitude in the frontal lobe of pASD was negatively correlated with the CFI total scores under the repetition sequence (r = −0.304, p = 0.053). These results indicated that pASD had deficit in cognitive flexibility at the self-reported and neurological levels. The cognitive flexibility difficulties of parents of children with ASD were related to autistic traits. These findings support that cognitive flexibility is most likely a neurocognitive endophenotype of ASD, which is worthy of further investigation.

Cross-sectional Developmental Trajectories of Executive Function and Relations to Theory of Mind in Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…However, their findings need to be interpreted cautiously and significantly to be further expanded due to the limited measures addressed. More specifically, Yu et al (2021) used only one type of task to measure cool and hot EF respectively, while Kouklari et al (2017Kouklari et al ( , 2019 addressed only two ToM tasks (1st-order false belief and mental state/emotion recognition tests) and also omitted to address the "cool" cognitive flexibility EF aspect which is considered to be central in ASD (a neurocognitive dimension related to the core ASD characteristics; Cheng et al, 2021). Thus, the present study sought to expand the hot EF-ToM relation in children and adolescents in ASD, by addressing an extensive battery to capture both domains.…”

Can the “female protective effect” liability threshold model explain sex differences in autism spectrum disorder?

“…By toddlerhood, language scores have also shown intermediate values for unaffected siblings of ASD probands in comparison with ASD-affected siblings and controls without a family history of ASD ( Marrus et al, 2018 ). Recent behavioral data also appear promising with respect to behavioral flexibility and response inhibition ( Cheng et al, 2021 ).…”