Sensorimotor and Executive Functioning Differences between High-Functioning Individuals with Autism and Typically-Developing Individuals
Year: 2008
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Autism is a life-long neurodevelopment disorder affecting 1 in every 150 children in the United States. Along with the three major hallmarks of autism; impairments in social interaction, impairments in communication, and repetitive and restricted stereotypes of behavior, individuals with autism face a variety of impairments that affect their everyday functioning. These impairments include, but are not limited to, impairments in motor skills, impairments in sensory-perceptual skills, and impairments in executive functioning (EF) skills. This dissertation explored these aforementioned impairments in individuals with high-functioning autism (IHFA) in three studies. The first study explored simple and complex motor and simple and complex sensory-perceptual skills differences between IHFA and typically-developing individuals (TDI) for different age groups extending from childhood to early adulthood. The study found IHFA to be impaired compared to TDI on simple and complex motor skills across the continuum of age. However, for sensory-perceptual skills IHFA impairments were found only for complex sensory-perceptual skills for an older group of IHFA. The second study explored factors that were associated with good and poor complex fine-motor skills for IHFA and TDI. Two models were generated utilizing Exhaustive Chi-Square Automatic Interaction Detection (CHAID). In this study, we found different factors to be associated with complex fine-motor skills for IHFA versus TDI. The patterns of association for IHFA were also different from TDI. In the third study, we explored the factors that were associated with good and poor EF skills by generating two models, one for IHFA and one for TDI, utilizing Exhaustive CHAID. In this study, we found similar factors to be associated with EF skills for both IHFA and TDI, however, the factors held different levels of association with EF in each group. Findings from the first study suggest the importance of early assessment and continuous re-assessment of simple and complex motor skills and complex sensory-perceptual skills for IHFA. Findings from the second and third study offer models that have the potential to establish priorities for assessment and intervention for IHFA.
Author: Sana Abu-Dahab
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W47234705