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Towards a Cognitive Phenotype for Autism: Increased Prevalence of Executive Dysfunction and Superior Spatial Span amongst Siblings of Children with Autism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 1999

Claire Hughes
Affiliation:
MRC Child Psychiatry Unit, Institute of Psychiatry, London, U.K.
Marie-Hélène Plumet
Affiliation:
Hôpital Robert Debré, Paris, France
Marion Leboyer
Affiliation:
Hôpital Robert Debré, Paris, France
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Abstract

Two studies were conducted to examine executive function skills in siblings of children with autism. In Study 1, four computerised tasks (three executive tasks: the ID/ED set-shifting task; a spatial working memory task; and the Tower of London planning task; and a control spatial span task) from the CANTAB battery were used to compare 31 siblings of children with autism with 32 siblings of children with developmental delay and 32 children from unaffected families. In Study 2, the two sibling groups were compared on two manually administered executive tasks (verbal fluency and list recall). As a group, autism siblings showed superior spatial and verbal span, but a greater than expected number performed poorly on the set-shifting, planning, and verbal fluency tasks. There were no group differences in working memory performance. The implications of these findings for the broader phenotype of autism is discussed.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 1999 Association for Child Psychology and Psychiatry

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