Discrepancies between direct and indirect measures of interpersonal and neurocognitive skills in autism spectrum disorder children

Abstract

Background: Subjects with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) show persistent deficits in social interaction. In order to explore the scope of their deficits, it is of great interest to compare the different interpersonal skills and executive functions of ASD subjects to those of children with typical development. Assessing these skills usually involves a large variety of informants (parents, teachers, other family members) and of measures, with frequent discrepancies between direct performance measures and indirect measures (third-party report) Different explanations of this mismatch between measures are addressed in previous studies. Objectives: We wish to analyze whether there are differences between children with ASD and children with typical development on several direct performance measures of interpersonal and neurocognitive skills and one third-party report on real-life performance of interpersonal skills; we also want to look at whether discrepancies appear between the two types of measurements y in the two groups of participants. Method: A total of 68 Spanish children between the ages of 7 and 12 participated; 34 were children with ASD and 34 showed typical development. All participants were tested for recognition of emotions, solving interpersonal conflicts, and executive function. Results: Significant differences between the two groups were not found on most of the direct performance measures, but they did appear in the report by third parties, in favor of the group with typical development. There was also a significant association between neurocognitive and social variables in the latter group. Conclusions: There were inter-group differences and discrepancies between the direct performance and indirect measures in children with ASD, and these must be explained. For this reason, future studies could seek to explain the cause of these discrepancies with a greater number of measures for each of the skills.