Summary: Proactive control is not impaired in people on the autism spectrum; rather, individuals with ASD appear to employ proactive control in a different, distinctive way.
Source: UC Davis
Researchers at the UC Davis MIND Institute report that differences in executive control seen in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may reflect an alternative strategy, not a deficit.
Difficulty with executive control—skills needed to plan, adapt behavior, and manage time—is often reported by people with ASD and can interfere with daily tasks. The new study, published in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, examines whether these difficulties stem from a failure of proactive control (maintaining control in advance of a demanding event) or reactive control (engaging control in response to an event).
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the team scanned the brains of 141 adolescents and young adults (ages 12–22), including 64 participants diagnosed with ASD and 77 neurotypical controls, enrolled in the Cognitive Control in Autism Study. During scanning, participants completed a task designed to require flexible responding based on a color cue and a directional probe.
On each trial, a colored cue—green or red—appeared, followed by a white arrow pointing left or right. For green cues participants were instructed to press the button matching the arrow’s direction; for red cues they pressed the opposite button. Trial order was randomized so participants could not predict the sequence.
“Our brains are generally more prepared to make a matching response than an opposite one,” said Andrew Gordon, postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and lead author of the paper.
Distinctive neural strategy in ASD
Analysis of brain activity during both the cue and the probe phases revealed a striking pattern. Individuals with ASD showed greater activation than controls in networks associated with proactive control—but primarily on the less demanding, matching trials. For the more demanding nonmatching trials, activity during the cue was similar between groups.
“This indicates proactive control itself is not absent in autism,” explained Marjorie Solomon, professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and senior author. “Instead, people with ASD appear to recruit proactive control differently—preparing more strongly for the easier trials rather than for the harder ones. That approach isn’t necessarily the most efficient, but it is a consistent alternative strategy.”
During the probe phase, connectivity patterns also differed by group. On the more demanding trials, individuals with ASD showed uniquely increased connectivity between regions linked to reactive control—suggesting an amplified reliance on reactive processes when the task became harder. Neurotypical participants did not show the same increase in reactive connectivity under higher demand.
“Much prior research emphasized neural disruptions as the basis for behavioral differences,” Gordon said. “Our findings point instead to a different organization of control systems: people with ASD are engaging the same networks, but in a distinct temporal and task-specific pattern.”
The study does not resolve why people with ASD favor a strategy that appears less efficient for this task. Solomon suggested one possibility is reduced cognitive flexibility: a tendency to apply the same control approach across contexts, or to favor preparatory effort for trials that are easier to predict.
Both authors emphasized the need for follow-up studies that manipulate stimulus ordering and task demands to better understand how presentation and expectation affect proactive and reactive control in ASD. Such research could clarify when different strategies are adaptive and when they produce challenges for daily functioning.
“These results contrast with some earlier studies and suggest we should adopt a more nuanced view of executive control in autism,” Gordon noted. “No single study changes the field, but the data encourage new questions about strategy, timing, and flexibility in neural control.”
Coauthors include Marie K. Krug and Rachel Wulff of UC Davis, Matthew V. Elliot of UC Berkeley, Jeremy Hogeveen of the University of New Mexico, and Tyler Lesh and Cameron Carter of the Imaging Research Center in Sacramento. The research was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grant No. R01MH10651802.
About this autism research news
Source: UC Davis
Contact: Marianne Sharp – UC Davis
Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research: Closed access. “Components of Executive Control in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Examination of Dual-Mechanism Accounts” by Andrew Gordon et al., Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging. DOI: 10.1016/j.bpsc.2020.11.008
Abstract
Components of Executive Control in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Examination of Dual-Mechanism Accounts
Background
It is unclear whether executive control (EC) differences in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) reflect deficits in proactive EC (sustained preparation before a cognitively demanding event) or in reactive EC (brief engagement when the event occurs). This study used a task designed to separate proactive and reactive components of EC while participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging.
Methods
During fMRI scanning, 141 participants (64 with ASD, 77 typically developing) completed a rapid “prepare to overcome prepotency” task: participants responded to an arrow probe according to the color of an initial cue. The authors examined functional activation and connectivity across frontoparietal task control, cingulo-opercular task control, salience, and default mode networks during cue and probe phases.
Results
Behavioral measures indicated executive control differences in ASD. Neuroimaging showed greater cue-related activation in proactive-control networks for ASD participants, but primarily on the less demanding matching trials; cue activity on more demanding nonmatching trials was similar across groups. During the probe, connectivity among regions associated with reactive control was selectively increased on more demanding trials for ASD participants but not for typically developing participants.
Conclusions
These findings suggest that common executive control differences in ASD may not reflect a categorical failure to engage proactive or reactive control. Instead, they point to reduced proactive engagement for demanding tasks and a compensatory reliance on reactive control, implying a distinct temporal strategy for cognitive control in autism spectrum disorder.