In this paper, we consider the domain of executive functions (EFs) and their possible role in developmental psychopathologies. We first consider general theoretical and measurement issues involved in studying EFs and then review studies of EFs in four developmental psychopathologies: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), conduct disorder (CD), autism, and Tourette syndrome (TS). Our review reveals that EF deficits are consistently found in both ADHD and autism but not in CD (without ADHD) or in TS. Moreover, both the severity and profile of EF deficits appears to differ across ADHD and autism. Molar EF deficits are more severe in the latter than the former. In the few studies of more specific EF tasks, there are impairments in motor inhibition in ADHD but not in autism, whereas there are impairments in verbal working memory in autism but not ADHD. We close with a discussion of implications for future research.

Executive Functions and Developmental Psychopathology

Previous studies have found a subgroup of people with autism or Asperger Syndrome who pass second-order tests of theory of mind. However, such tests have a ceiling in developmental terms corresponding to a mental age of about 6 years. It is therefore impossible to say if such individuals are intact or impaired in their theory of mind skills. We report the performance of very high functioning adults with autism or Asperger Syndrome on an adult test of theory of mind ability. The task involved inferring the mental state of a person just from the information in photographs of a person's eyes. Relative to age-matched normal controls and a clinical control group (adults with Tourette Syndrome), the group with autism and Asperger Syndrome were significantly impaired on this task. The autism and Asperger Syndrome sample was also impaired on Happe's strange stories tasks. In contrast, they were unimpaired on two control tasks: recognising gender from the eye region of the face, and recognising basic emotions from the whole face. This provides evidence for subtle mindreading deficits in very high functioning individuals on the autistic continuum.

/pdf/another-advanced-test-of-theory-of-mind-evidence-from-very-3qzftxxcd4.pdf

Another advanced test of theory of mind: evidence from very high functioning adults with autism or asperger syndrome.

https://autismtruths.org/pdf/SimonBaronCohen_The%20extreme-male-brain%20theory%20of%20autism.pdf

The extreme male brain theory of autism

http://library.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/ft/ext/rd/RD_Other_1995.pdf

Other minds in the brain: a functional imaging study of "theory of mind" in story comprehension.

https://wiki.inf.ed.ac.uk/twiki/pub/ECHOES/MindTheory/Frith1994.pdf

Autism: beyond “theory of mind”

Reading the Eyes: Evidence for the Role of Perception in the Development of a Theory of Mind

In this paper we describe a cognitive mechanism, the Intention Editor, which is triggered whenever there are several intentions competing in parallel with each other. This mechanism is hypothesized to be a subcomponent of a larger mechanism, the Supervisory Attentional System (SAS: Shallice, 1988) which serves inhibition in general. The Intention Editor interrupts one of several simultaneously activated intentions, preventing it from executing its action, utterance, or thought. This mechanism appears to develop during the first five to six years of life. We propose that an impairment in the development of this mechanism may account for the triad of symptoms in children with Gilles de la Tourette Syndrome (GTS): involuntary movements, involuntary utterances, and obsessive thoughts. This mechanism is tested with normal children aged 3–6 years old, and with children with GTS, in two experiments.In Experiment 1, subjects were required to make one hand movement while inhibiting making a (different) hand movement that the other hand was simultaneously making. In Experiment 2, they were asked to say one thing while inhibiting saying something else. On both tasks, normal 6-year-olds were significantly better than normal 4-year-olds, but children with GTS performed worse than normal 6-year-olds, despite having a mean age of 12 years. These results constitute preliminary evidence for the theory that the Intention Editor is dysfunctional in GTS.

Can children with Gilles de la Tourette syndrome edit their intentions

We take a fresh look at emotion recognition in autistic children, by testing their recognition of three different emotions (happy, sad, and surprise). The interest in selecting these is that whereas the first two are typical “simple” emotions (caused by situations), the third is typically a “cognitive” emotion (caused by beliefs). Because subjects with autism have clear difficulties in understanding beliefs, we predicted they would show more difficulty in recognising surprise. In contrast, as they have no difficulty in understanding situations as causes of emotion, we predicted they would not show deficits in recognising happy and sad. These predictions were borne out, in a comparison with a group of normal children and in a group of subjects with mental handicap. This result shows the importance of fine-grain analysis in emotion-recognition tasks, and is discussed in relation to affective and theory of mind models of autism.

Do children with autism recognise surprise? A research note

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Reading the Eyes: Evidence for the Role of Perception in the Development of a Theory of Mind

Can children with Gilles de la Tourette syndrome edit their intentions

Do children with autism recognise surprise? A research note