Executive and motor function in children with autism spectrum disorder

Ting Liu; Morgan Tongish; Yumeng Li; Paola Matiko Martins Okuda

doi:10.1007/s10339-023-01156-y

Executive and motor function in children with autism spectrum disorder

Cogn Process. 2023 Nov;24(4):537-547. doi: 10.1007/s10339-023-01156-y. Epub 2023 Aug 26.

Authors

Ting Liu¹, Morgan Tongish², Yumeng Li², Paola Matiko Martins Okuda³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Health and Human Performance, Texas State University, 601 University Dr., San Marcos, TX, 78666, USA. tingliu@txstate.edu.
² Department of Health and Human Performance, Texas State University, 601 University Dr., San Marcos, TX, 78666, USA.
³ Universidade Federal de São Paulo, São Paulo, SP, Brazil.

PMID: 37632649
DOI: 10.1007/s10339-023-01156-y

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between executive function, mainly attention and impulse control, and motor function impairment in children with ASD. Fifteen children with ASD (ages 8-14 years) were examined on their executive function using the Conners continuous performance test-3 and motor function using the movement assessment battery for children-2 (MABC-2). It was found that children with ASD were delayed on executive and motor function. This means that those effects were also observed in male children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) who had similar characteristics as the participants in the study. This study may have practical implications in the relationship between executive function and motor performance in children with ASD and for clinicians and educators working with children with ASD. Furthermore, the findings suggest that variability in reaction time may be a useful predictor of motor skill performance in children with ASD and may reflect underlying difficulties in executive function and future research is suggested.

Keywords: Autism; Children; Cognition; Executive function; Motor skills.