Everyday executive function issues from the perspectives of autistic adolescents and their parents: Theoretical and empirical implications

Abstract

There is a long tradition of research into autistic people’s executive function skills. Yet, despite decades of research on EF in autism, the existing literature remains contradictory and ‘confusing’, with a large – and unresolved – discrepancy between small-to-moderate effect sizes demonstrated on laboratory-based EF tasks and large effect sizes on questionnaire-based everyday EF measures. We sought to understand this mismatch between ‘lab and life’ by inviting 12 autistic adolescents (12–19 years) and their mothers ( n = 7) to convey their views and perspectives about their own, or their child’s, EF skills as they transition to adulthood. We followed Braun and Clarke’s method for reflexive thematic analysis using an inductive approach. Participants told us that their EF skills were highly variable, acutely dependent on the context in which they were deployed and potentially related to differences in the way that they process information more broadly. Participants’ reports provided rare insights into their and their children’s executive control – insights that do not straightforwardly map onto traditional theoretical models of EF. Future work on EF needs to take seriously the perspectives and subjectivity of autistic people themselves, including by triangulating quantitative, objective assessments with qualitative, subjective reports in complementary (controlled, uncontrolled) settings. Lay abstract Autism researchers have a long-time interest in a set of skills called executive function. These skills include planning, inhibition, and switching between one activity and another. There was a theory that these skills explained the social and thinking difficulties autistic people might have. After years of study into this, the evidence is confusing and contradictory. Autistic people tend to report struggling quite a lot with these skills. Yet, when researchers test these skills, they do not tend to find such big difficulties. In this study, we spoke to 12 autistic teenagers and seven of their mothers about this. We asked them what they thought about their own, or their child’s, executive function skills. We wanted to know about things they were good at and things they struggled with. They told us that their skills were very changeable from one context to the next and from one time to the next. According to their reports, their skills depended on how motivated they were by doing the task. Another thing that influenced their skills were how anxious they felt at the time they needed to use the skill. Finally, they told us that sometimes they think differently about how best to perform a task. We discuss what these insights mean for autism researchers who study these skills. In future, research should ask people about their experiences alongside testing their abilities in different contexts. Combining these information sources will give us a better understanding of autistic people’s everyday skills as well as how best to support them.