Division of Child Neurology and Psychiatry, Stella Maris Scientific Institute, University of Pisa, Via dei Giacinti, 2, 56018, Calambrone, Pisa, Italy.
J Autism Dev Disord. 2013 Aug;43(8):1895-909. doi: 10.1007/s10803-012-1736-0.
A comprehensive investigation of the neuropsychological strengths and weaknesses of children with autism may help to better describe their cognitive abilities and to design appropriate interventions. To this end we compared the NEPSY-II profiles of 22 children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders (HFASD) with those of 44 healthy control (HC) children 2:1 matched by gender, age, race and education. Results showed that only Visuospatial Processing was relatively spared in HFASD, while deficits were observed in Attention and Executive Functions, Language, Learning and Memory, and Sensorimotor Processing. Theory of Mind difficulties were observed in verbal tasks but not in the understanding of emotional contexts, suggesting that appropriate contextual cues might help emotion understanding in HFASD children. These widespread neuropsychological impairments reflect alterations in multiple cognitive domains in HFASD.
对自闭症儿童的神经心理优势和劣势进行全面调查，可能有助于更好地描述他们的认知能力，并设计出合适的干预措施。为此，我们将 22 名高功能自闭症谱系障碍（HFASD）儿童与 44 名健康对照组（HC）儿童的 NEPSY-II 图谱进行了比较，这些儿童按照性别、年龄、种族和教育程度进行了 2:1 的匹配。结果表明，只有在视觉空间处理方面，HFASD 相对较好，而在注意力和执行功能、语言、学习和记忆以及感觉运动处理方面则存在缺陷。心理理论困难仅在言语任务中观察到，而在理解情绪情境中则没有观察到，这表明适当的情境线索可能有助于 HFASD 儿童理解情绪。这些广泛的神经心理学损伤反映了 HFASD 中多个认知领域的改变。
