Executive Function Skills in School-Age Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: Association With Language Abilities

Abstract

This article reviews research on executive function (EF) skills in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and the relation between EF and language abilities. The current study assessed EF using nonverbal tasks of inhibition, shifting, and updating of working memory (WM) in school-age children with ASD. It also evaluated the association between children's receptive and expressive language abilities and EF performance. Method: In this study, we sought to address variables that have contributed to inconsistencies in this area of researchincluding task issues, group comparisons, and participant heterogeneity. EF abilities in children with ASD (n = 48) were compared to typically developing controls (n = 71) matched on age, as well as when statistically controlling for group differences in nonverbal cognition, socioeconomic status, and social communication abilities. Six nonverbal EF tasks were administered-2 each to evaluate inhibition, shifting, and WM. Language abilities were assessed via a standardized language measure. Language-EF associations were examined for the ASD group as a whole and subdivided by language status. Results: Children with ASD exhibited significant deficits in all components of EF compared to age-mates and showed particular difficulty with shifting after accounting for group differences in nonverbal cognition. Controlling for social communication-a core deficit in ASD-eliminated group differences in EF performance. A modest association was observed between language (especially comprehension) and EF skills, with some evidence of different patterns between children on the autism spectrum with and without language impairment. Conclusions: There is a need for future research to examine the direction of influence between EF and language. It would be beneficial for EF interventions with children with ASD to consider language outcomes and, conversely, to examine whether specific language training facilitates aspects of executive control in children on the autism spectrum.

A Review of Language, Executive Function, and Intervention in Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…The authors also proposed that this connection between working memory, syntax, and semantics could be due to a limitation in the ability to develop and utilize verbal mediation strategies during these executive function tasks. 11 Ellis Weismer and colleagues 67 also used the CELF-4 62 to specifically look at associations between receptive and expressive language scores and executive functions (i.e., shifting, inhibition, and updating of working memory). Their participant groups included children with TD and children with ASD, who were all between the ages of 8 and 12 years.…”

“…The authors proposed that the association between language and executive functioning skills support the HCSM, but they caution that this finding does not answer the question of directionality. 67 Durrleman and Delage 32 studied 5-to 16-year-old children and adolescents with ASD (mean age ¼ 9; 07) and DLD (mean age ¼ 9; 07) compared with age-matched controls and younger controls matched on expressive grammar abilities. They assessed expressive grammar and specifically examined pronoun production.…”

“…70 In sum, language abilities (overall language and pragmatic language, specifically) appear to be particularly important for working memory in this population. 11,13,32,67 It is also possible that working memory underlies performance on language-based tasks, such as a lexical decision task. 61 Findings regarding the relationship between executive functions and expressive and receptive vocabulary knowledge appear to be mixed.…”

Relationships between autistic traits, insufficient sleep, and real-world executive functions in children: a mediation analysis of a national epidemiological survey

“…Alternatively, it is posited that high executive functions may protect children with genetic risks from ASD by compensating atypical functioning in other brain systems in their early life (Johnson, 2012) and could mask symptoms of ASD despite persisting core deficits at cognitive and/or neurobiological levels in individuals with ASD (Livingston, Colvert, Social Relationships Study, Bolton, & Happé, 2019; Livingston & Happe, 2017). Although current evidence does not find impairment in a single subdomain of executive functions to be a universal feature of individuals with ASD (Demetriou et al, 2018), it is generally accepted that executive function deficits are widespread in individuals with ASD and individual variation of executive functions may contribute to the heterogeneity of other area of difficulty in ASD, language, (Weismer, Kaushanskaya, Larson, Mathée, & Bolt, 2018) and adaptive functioning (Kenny, Cribb, & Pellicano, 2018) for instance.…”

Executive Functions and Developmental Profiles in Preschool Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…Adaptive behavior was signi cantly related to three executive functions in preschool children with ASD: inhibition, working memory, and planning. These results can be informative in the context of identifying the EF subdomains as a potential target for improving adaptive behavior skills (Tomaszewski et al, 2020) and communication skills (Weismer et al, 2018).…”