Wisconsin Card Sorting Test-Learning Potential: Usefulness for Assessing Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

A meta-analysis of cognitive flexibility in autism spectrum disorder

Cognitive flexibility is a fundamental process that underlies adaptive behaviour in response to environmental change. Studies examining the profile of cognitive flexibility in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have reported inconsistent findings. To address whether difficulties with cognitive flexibility are characteristic of autism, we conducted a random-effects meta-analysis and employed subgroup analyses and meta-regression to assess the impact of relevant moderator variables such as task, outcomes, and age. Fifty-nine studies were included and comprised of 2122 autistic individuals without intellectual disabilities and 2036 neurotypical controls, with an age range of 4 to 85 years. The results showed that autistic individuals have greater difficulties with cognitive flexibility, with an overall statistically significant small to moderate effect size. Subgroup analyses revealed a significant difference between task outcomes, with perseverative errors obtaining the largest effect size. In summary, the present meta-analysis highlights the existence of cognitive flexibility difficulties in autistic people, in the absence of learning disabilities, but also that this profile is characterised by substantial heterogeneity. Potential contributing factors are discussed.

Executive functions in non-suicidal self-injury comorbid first-episode and drug-naïve depression among adolescents

Executive functions(EFs) may be associated with the emergence of non-suicidal self-injury(NSSI) due to their role as behavior controllers. EFs includes three core cognitive processes: inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility(i.e. the ability to selectively alter cognitive strategies to generate appropriate behavior in the changing environment). This study aimed to systematically explore the three core EFs in depressed adolescents with NSSI. The data was obtained from the baseline data of the Chinese adolescent depression Cohort. The adolescents underwent cognitive assessments to yield domain-specific scores in EFs using the Digit Span Backward test(DSB), the Stroop Color-word interference test- color-word condition(Stroop-CW), and the Wisconsin Card Sorting tests(WCST). The significant differences in WCST scores were found between the NSSI group and the non-NSSI group. NSSI frequency was moderately positively correlated with total errors and negatively correlated with the number of categories completed. The number of categories completed in the "≥200″ NSSI frequency group was significantly lower than that in the "≤10″ NSSI group. The current findings suggested that depressed adolescents who had engaged in NSSI have poorer cognitive flexibility performance compared to adolescents without NSSI. As the frequency of NSSI increased, cognitive flexibility might become worse. These results provide evidence of a connection between executive dysfunctions and NSSI in depressed adolescents.