Children's Research Institute, Center for Neuroscience, Children's National Medical Center, Washington, DC, USA.
Child Neuropsychol. 2011;17(4):391-9. doi: 10.1080/09297049.2010.547462.
Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) often struggle with complex tasks, such as those requiring divided attention (simultaneously completing two independent tasks) that also place high demands on working memory. Prior research shows that divided attention is impaired in adults and children with ASD and is related to ASD and comorbid attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms, but the impact on everyday functioning is unclear. Because ADHD symptoms are associated with poor divided attention and working memory performance in children with ASD, we also examined ADHD symptoms as moderators of divided attention performance. We examined performance on the Consonant Trigrams Test (CTT) between high-functioning 8- to 13-year-olds with ASD (n = 28) and typically developing controls (n = 18) matched on age and IQ. In the ASD group, we also correlated performance with ADHD symptoms and behavior ratings of everyday working memory. CTT performance in children with ASD was significantly worse than in matched controls. A significant correlation between CTT performance and everyday working memory was observed, but CTT performance was not related to comorbid ADHD symptoms in the ASD group. Divided attention with high working-memory demands is a relative weakness in children with high-functioning ASD; this weakness relates to everyday functioning, and it is independent from ADHD symptoms. That ADHD symptoms are not associated with divided attention performance is inconsistent with one prior investigation, which likely results from using different divided attention tasks in the two studies.
自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）个体通常难以完成复杂任务，例如需要注意力分配（同时完成两个独立的任务）且对工作记忆要求较高的任务。先前的研究表明，自闭症谱系障碍患者的注意力分配受损，且与自闭症谱系障碍和共患的注意缺陷多动障碍（ADHD）症状有关，但对日常功能的影响尚不清楚。由于 ADHD 症状与自闭症谱系障碍儿童的注意力分配和工作记忆表现差有关，因此我们还检查了 ADHD 症状是否为注意力分配表现的调节因素。我们在年龄和智商相匹配的高功能 8-13 岁自闭症谱系障碍儿童（n = 28）和典型发育对照组（n = 18）之间检查了辅音三连音测试（CTT）的表现。在自闭症谱系障碍组中，我们还将表现与 ADHD 症状和日常工作记忆的行为评定相关联。自闭症谱系障碍儿童的 CTT 表现明显差于匹配对照组。在自闭症谱系障碍组中，CTT 表现与日常工作记忆之间存在显著相关性，但与共患的 ADHD 症状无关。具有高工作记忆需求的注意力分配是高功能自闭症谱系障碍儿童的相对弱点；这种弱点与日常功能有关，且独立于 ADHD 症状。ADHD 症状与注意力分配表现无关与之前的一项研究不一致，这可能是由于两项研究使用了不同的注意力分配任务所致。
