García-Villamisar D, Hughes C
Departamento de Personalidad, Evaluación y Psicologia Clinica I, Facultad de Educación, Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Nuevo Horizonte Association, Madrid, Spain.
J Intellect Disabil Res. 2007 Feb;51(Pt 2):142-50. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2788.2006.00854.x.
The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a supported employment programme on measures of executive functions for 44 adults with autism, assessed at the beginning and the end of the programme period. The average length of time of the community employment was 30 months.
Based on their predominant work activity over the study period, participants were classified into two groups: supported employment and unemployed. At the start of the programme, the groups did not differ on any of the cognitive measures.
Repeated measures analysis of variance (anova) demonstrated that by the end of the programme, the supported employment group showed higher scores for executive functions on variables of CANTAB (Spatial Span Task--span length recalled; Spatial Working Memory Task--strategy; Planning task 'Stockings of Cambridge'--problems solved in minimum moves; Planning task 'Stockings of Cambridge'--mean planning time) and other tasks such as Trail Making Test - part B, time; Matching Familiar Figures (first answer and errors). In contrast, the unemployed group showed no change over time in their cognitive performance.
Results of this study suggested that vocational rehabilitation programmes have a beneficial impact upon cognitive performance in people with autism.
本研究旨在考察一项支持性就业计划对44名自闭症成年人执行功能指标的影响，在计划期开始和结束时进行评估。社区就业的平均时长为30个月。
根据研究期间的主要工作活动，参与者被分为两组：支持性就业组和失业组。在计划开始时，两组在任何认知指标上均无差异。
重复测量方差分析表明，到计划结束时，支持性就业组在剑桥神经心理测试自动化成套系统（CANTAB）的变量（空间广度任务——回忆的广度长度；空间工作记忆任务——策略；计划任务“剑桥长袜”——以最少步数解决的问题；计划任务“剑桥长袜”——平均计划时间）以及其他任务（如连线测验B部分、时间；匹配熟悉图形[首次回答和错误]）上的执行功能得分更高。相比之下，失业组的认知表现随时间没有变化。
本研究结果表明，职业康复计划对自闭症患者的认知表现有有益影响。
