The role of interstimulus interval and “Stimulus‐type” in prepotent response inhibition abilities in people with ASD: A quantitative and qualitative review

Abstract

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are associated with prepotent response inhibition difficulties. However, the large variation between studies suggests that understudied factors, such as interstimulus interval (ISI) and "stimulus-type" (both hypothesized proxies of stressors influencing arousal), might influence the inhibitory abilities of people with ASD. Using meta-analysis, we tested whether differences in prepotent response inhibition between people with and without ASD was influenced by ISI. There was not enough variation in "stimulus-type" between the studies to include it as a moderator. Thirty-seven studies met inclusion criteria, with a combined sample size of 950 people with ASD and 966 typically developing controls. Additionally, a qualitative review including studies comparing a neutral and an arousing condition in one experiment was performed to examine whether fast ISI or specific arousing stimuli directly influence prepotent response inhibition. The meta-analysis indicated that ISI was not a relevant moderator. The qualitative review showed that ISI and "stimulus-type" had the same effect for both groups. Although all studies regarding ISI indicated that fast ISI worsened performance, different types of stimuli had either a positive or a negative influence. This could suggest that distinctive stimuli might affect arousal differently. While we replicated the inhibition difficulties in people with ASD (g = .51), our results do not show strong ASD-specific effects of ISI or "stimulus-type" on inhibition. Nonetheless, ISI and "stimulus-type" do seem to influence performance. Future research focusing on potential underlying factors (e.g., baseline physiological arousal) is needed to examine why this is the case. Autism Res 2016, 9: 1124-1141. © 2016 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Rigidity coincides with reduced cognitive control to affective cues in children with autism.

“…faces) (Geurts et al, 2014). Children with ASD did not demonstrate differences in cognitive control to happy versus calm social stimuli and the lack of a difference is in agreement with previous work in children (DiCriscio et al, 2016;Geurts et al, 2009a;Kuiper et al, 2016;Yerys et al, 2013) and adults with ASD (Duerden et al, 2013;Shafritz et al, 2015). Notably, the present study used child emotional faces, whereas previous studies used adult emotional faces.…”

Heart rate variability predicts inhibitory control in adults with autism spectrum disorders

“…Interference control is the ability to ignore irrelevant stimuli. Although recent meta-analyses confirm that people with ASD have more prepotent response inhibition (Cohen's d = 0.55; Hedges'g = 0.51) and interference control (Cohen's d = 0.31) difficulties than typically developing (TD) individuals, both meta-analyses also found a large amount of heterogeneity (Geurts, van den Bergh & Ruzzano, 2014;Kuiper, Verhoeven & Geurts, 2016). This means that the findings across studies were inconsistent.…”

“…This large amount of heterogeneity between inhibitory control study findings in people with ASD suggests that there are other factors that influence these findings. In the two aforementioned meta-analyses, we examined several possible factors, namely the possible influence of age, intelligence (IQ), interstimulus interval (ISI) and 'stimulus type' (Geurts et al, 2014;Kuiper et al, 2016). In the first meta-analysis, age explained 25% of the heterogeneity between the studies on prepotent response inhibition, but a significant amount of heterogeneity still remained.…”

Specificity of executive function and theory of mind performance in relation to attention-deficit/hyperactivity symptoms in autism spectrum disorders

“…Importantly, we did not detect a significant association between ToM impairments and ADHD symptoms in the model, consistent with a recent meta-analytic finding showing that ToM difficulties are present to a much lesser extent in ADHD than ASD populations [ 9 ]. The specific relation between EF and ADHD symptoms in this context may provide an explanation for the mixed findings of EF difficulties in ASD (e.g., [ 17 , 29 , 30 ]), in that, EF difficulties are perhaps more likely to be found among people with ASD who have co-occurring ADHD.…”

“…The impairments of EF have been reported especially in ADHD [ 26 – 28 ], and it is uncertain presently if executive dysfunctions truly characterize ASD. Findings of impairments across studies have been heterogeneous (e.g., [ 17 , 29 , 30 ]), and the performance of the EF tasks are rarely correlated with ASD symptom severity, except for between cognitive flexibility deficits and repetitive behavior (e.g., [ 31 – 34 ]). Evidence also suggests that EF impairments in the ASD population are associated with co-occurring ADHD traits.…”