Executive Functions and Symptom Severity in an Italian Sample of Intellectually Able Preschoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

A novel battery (BAFE; Valeri et al., 2015) was used in order to assess three Executive Function (EF) abilities (working memory, inhibition and shifting) in a sample of 27 intellectually able preschoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) compared with 27 typically developing children matched on age and nonverbal IQ. Differences in EF skills were analyzed in participants with distinct ASD symptom severity. Children with ASD performed worse than typical controls on both set-shifting and inhibition, but not on visuo-spatial working memory. Additionally, children with more severe ASD symptoms showed a worse performance on inhibition than children with milder symptoms. These results confirm the presence of EF deficits and highlight a link between ASD symptoms and EF impairments in preschool age. Response to Reviewers: COMMENTS TO THE AUTHOR: > Reviewer #1: In this study the authors investigated the core executive functions (EF) working memory, inhibition, and shifting using the BAFE test battery in 27 highfunctioning preschoolers with ASD and 27 age and nonverbal IQ matched typically developing children. Differences in these three core EFs were also assessed across participants with distinct ASD symptom severity. Results showed that children with ASD performed worse on the BAFE subtests measuring inhibition and shifting than typically developing children whereas performance on the BAFE subtest measuring working memory was not affected. Furthermore, children with more severe ASD symptomatology showed worse performance on the BAFE inhibition subtest than Powered by Editorial Manager® and ProduXion Manager® from Aries Systems Corporation children with milder symptomatology. The authors suggest that these results confirm the presence of EF deficits in preschoolers with ASD and highlight a link between ASD symptomatology and EF. The authors need to be complimented for their efforts in collecting difficult to obtain data from such a young group of children. In general, this is a concise and well-written paper, methods are sound, results are nicely presented, and the findings are discussed in a clear manner. However, before recommending the paper for publication I have a couple of suggestions for improvement. These are listed below in the order that they appear in the paper.

Comparison of Adaptive Functioning in Children with Williams Beuren Syndrome and Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Cross‐Syndrome Study

“…However, recent researches showed that also executive functioning, assessed in preschoolers [i.e. Valeri et al, 2019], are predictors of adaptive level in a 12 years follow‐up [Kenny, Cribb, & Pellicano, 2019].…”

Biopsychological correlates of repetitive and restricted behaviors in autism spectrum disorders

“…The deficit in inhibition has been associated with the inefficient ability to regulate RRBs (Turner, 1997). This hypothesis was supported by Valeri and coworkers, who found that children with ASD committed more errors to suppress responses in comparison to typically developed children (Valeri et al., 2019). Similar findings have been documented in adults (Van Eylen et al., 2015).…”

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

“…However, existing research does not point to the universal pro le of weaknesses in EF that we found in our study. For example, other studies have also found signi cant EF differences in preschools with ASD and typically developing preschoolers in the domain of shifting and inhibition but not on visual-spatial working memory tasks (Valeri et al, 2020). In a study that used the BRIEF-P for the assessment of EF, signi cant differences between preschoolers with ASD and typically developing children were again found on the subscales: inhibition and shifting but not on the subscale working memory (Carotenuto et al, 2019).…”