An examination of perseverative errors and cognitive flexibility in autism

Landry, Oriane; Mitchell, Peter

Abstract

Perseveration is a well-replicated finding in autism. The aim of this study was to examine how the context of the task influences performance with respect to this phenomenon. We randomly assigned 137 children aged 6–12 with and without autism to complete a modified card-sorting task under one of two conditions: Children were either told the sorting rules on each trial (Explicit), or were given feedback to formulate the rules themselves (Implicit). While performance was enhanced on the Explicit condition for participants without autism, the participants with autism were disadvantaged by this manipulation. In contrast, there were few differences in performance between groups on the Implicit condition. Exploratory analyses were used to examine this unexpected result; increased autism symptomology was associated with poorer performance.

Citation

Landry, O., & Mitchell, P. (2021). An examination of perseverative errors and cognitive flexibility in autism. PLoS ONE, 16(1), Article e0223160. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0223160

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 27, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Jan 13, 2021
• Publication Date: Jan 13, 2021
• Deposit Date: Oct 2, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 13, 2021
• Journal: PLoS ONE
• Electronic ISSN: 1932-6203
• Publisher: Public Library of Science
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 16
• Issue: 1
• Article Number: e0223160
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0223160
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2736377
• Publisher URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0223160