Beyond group differences: Exploring the preliminary signals of target engagement of an executive function training for autistic children Edmunds, Sarah R. MacNaughton, Gabrielle A. Rueda Cuerva, María Del Rosario Cómbita, Lina M. Faja, Susan ADHD Anxiety Autism spectrum disorder Executive function training Inhibitory control Moderation Target engagement DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT The data that support the findings for this study are available within the National Database for Autism Research (NDAR) at nda.nih.gov. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors thank the staff and students who assisted with collecting and scoring these measures and who provided coaching. The authors specially thank the children and families who contributed their time to this study and joined in the effort to better understand the executive function of children on the autism spectrum. Additional protocol information is available at ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT02361762. The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research reported in this publication was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under Award no. R00HD071966. Additional funding to support intervention with the waitlist group was provided by the GoFAR Foundation. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. Understanding both for whom and how interventions work is a crucial next step in providing personalized care to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Autistic children present with heterogeneity both within core ASD criteria and with respect to co-occurring mental health challenges, which may affect their ability to benefit from intervention. In a secondary data analysis of a randomized control trial evaluating an executive function (EF) training with 70 7- to 11-year-old autistic children, we explored: (1) whether co-occurring attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) features or anxiety features at baseline moderated the extent to which children benefited from the EF training. In other words, we asked, “For whom is training effective?” We also explored: (2) the extent to which changes in a brain-based measure of target engagement predicted the clinical outcomes of the EF training. This is a step towards asking, “How is training effective?” We found that EF training improved behavioral inhibition only for children with clinically significant cooccurring ADHD features. Anxiety features, while prevalent, did not moderate EF training efficacy. Finally, for the EF training group only, there was a significant correlation between pre-to-post change in an EEG-based measure of target engagement, N2 incongruent amplitude during a flanker task, and change in repetitive behaviors, a behavioral outcome that was reported in the parent RCT to have improved with training compared to waitlist control. This study provides preliminary evidence that EF training may differentially affect subgroups of autistic children and that changes at the neural level may precede changes in behavior. 2022-05-13T10:05:57Z 2022-05-13T10:05:57Z 2022-04-28 info:eu-repo/semantics/article Edmunds, S. R., MacNaughton, G. A., Rueda, M. R., Combita, L. M., & Faja, S. (2022). Beyond group differences: Exploring the preliminary signals of target engagement of an executive function training for autistic children. Autism Research, 1–13. [https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.2735] http://hdl.handle.net/10481/74823 10.1002/aur.2735 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 3.0 España Wiley