title: Reduced Efficiency and Capacity of Cognitive Control in Autism Spectrum Disorder.
abstract: Cognitive control constrains mental operations to prioritize information that reaches conscious awareness and is essential to flexible, adaptive behavior under conditions of uncertainty. Cognitive control can be compromised by neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which is characterized by the presence of social and communicative deficits, and restricted interests/repetitive behaviors. Although prior investigations have attempted to elucidate the nature of cognitive control in ASD, whether there is an underlying information processing deficit associated with cognitive control remains unclear. This study challenged cognitive control in 15 high-functioning adults with ASD and 15 typically developing (TD) controls using three novel tasks designed to systematically manipulate uncertainty. We aimed to investigate the efficiency of cognitive control in sequential information processing, cognitive control of nonsequential information processing across a range of cognitive loads and cognitive control capacity under time constraint. Results demonstrated that the ASD group performed less efficiently on sequential and nonsequential information processing, and had reduced cognitive control capacity under time constraint relative to the TD group. These findings suggest that inefficient cognitive control of information processing may be a fundamental deficit in ASD.
authors.affiliation: Graduate Center, The City University of New York, New York, NY, 10016.|Department of Psychology, Queens College, The City University of New York, Queens, NY, 11367.
authors.forename: Melissa-Ann
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Mackie
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Queens College, The City University of New York, Queens, NY, 11367.|Departments of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, 10029.|Neuroscience, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, 10029.|Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, 10029.
authors.forename: Jin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Fan
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000067877:Autism Spectrum Disorder / Q000150:complications* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D003071:Cognition; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000150:complications* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D056344:Executive Function; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: autism; cognitive control; executive functions; information processing; information theory