Despite reasoning skills, Asperger boys struggle to focus

Deborah Rudacille

16 May 2011

Attention deficit: Children with Asperger syndrome have trouble remembering where a colored square is located on a gray field.

Teenage boys with Asperger syndrome who have higher-than-average scores on tests of abstract reasoning fare worse than controls on short-term memory and ability to filter out distractions. Researchers reported the findings in a poster Saturday at the International Meeting for Autism Research in San Diego.
The results are surprising because in healthy people, superior abstract reasoning skills usually dovetail with better working memory — the short-term storage and management of information — and enhanced ability to filter out distractions.
Boys with Asperger syndrome consistently score better on tests assessing the ability to reason abstractly compared with typical peers of either sex.
In 2010, the first study to look at gender differences in abstract reasoning among children with Asperger syndrome showed that boys also score higher than girls with the disorder.
In the new study, researchers compared 34 teenagers with Asperger syndrome — 17 males and 17 females — with 34 typically developing controls on tasks assessing working memory and ability to filter out distractions.
All study participants score average or above average in verbal intelligence, but the boys with Asperger syndrome score higher on fluid intelligence, or abstract reasoning, than the girls with the disorder and typical controls.
To assess working memory in the participants, the researchers flashed an image of two colored squares on a screen for 150 milliseconds. After a 900-millisecond rest interval, just one square flashed on the screen. The participants had to recall the previous locations of the squares in order to say whether the single square was in the same location as in the previous screen.
The task progressively became more difficult, and participants had to recall the location of six colored squares in order to correctly pinpoint the location of one remaining square.
In a related task assessing the ability to filter out distractions, the researchers mixed in four rectangles with two squares on the first screen. The participants had to ignore the rectangles in order to correctly identify the location of the square in the second screen.
The researchers found no difference between males and females with Asperger syndrome on these tests — they both performed worse than the control group on both tasks.
"Working memory and attentional filtering do not appear to be the mechanisms driving this superior fluid intelligence performance in boys with Asperger syndrome," said lead investigator Tasha Oswald, a graduate student in the laboratory of Louis Moses, associate professor of psychology at the University of Oregon.
Oswald was pleased to see several studies exploring gender differences in autism at this year's conference. For the first time in IMFAR's ten-year history, she noted, an entire session was devoted to the topic.
Though her study shows that boys and girls with Asperger syndrome share deficits in memory and attention, it doesn't explain why boys with the disorder are better at abstract reasoning, she said.
Nor does it explain why girls with the disorder seem to be more prone to depression, a phenomenon she encountered in recruiting study participants.
"People are just starting to recognize that maybe we shouldn't be making all these assumptions about girls with Asperger syndrome based on boys," she said.

Boys with Social Skills Problems have more Difficulty in Adolescence

by MindMattrz Psychology Clinic and Centre for Aspergers Syndrome and Autism on Sunday, 14 August 2011 at 18:24

Boys with Social Skills Problems have more Difficulty in Adolescence
A study published in the October 1997 issue of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology (pages 758-767) highlighted the importance of a child's peer relations in their long term successful adaptation. In this study, the authors followed boys who had been diagnosed with ADHD over a 4 year period. At the beginning of the study, careful assessments were made of the boys' emotional state, aggressive behavior, and conduct disorder symptoms. The authors also paid close attention to the quality of the boys' peer relations -e.g. how well accepted were they by their peers; did they have a close friend. Boys who fared poorly on these assessments of social functioning were considered to have a "social disability". (It is important to note that this peer relations variable was evaluated independently from children's behavioral and emotional functioning. Thus, some boys who were doing well socially were showing emotional and/or behavioral problems while others did not show these latter difficulties but were struggling in their relations with peers.)
Two questions were of primary interest. First, the authors wanted to know if social disability at the beginning of the study was a significant predictor of severe long term outcomes 4 years later when the boys were adolescents (e.g. substance abuse). Second, they wanted to determine whether being "socially disabled" (i.e. having important difficulty in one's relations with peers) made a unique contribution to boys' long term outcomes. That is, do social problems play an important role in children's adjustment as adolescents even when other difficulties such as emotional and behavioral problems are taken into consideration.
The results obtained were quite interesting. At the 4 year follow up period, boys with ADHD who had been identified as socially disabled had higher rates of mood, anxiety, behavioral, and substance use disorders than ADHD boys who were not socially disabled and boys without ADHD. In addition, statistical analyses indicated that having a social disability at the beginning of the study significantly increased the risk of developing later conduct disorder and substance use disorders even after earlier emotional and behavioral functioning was taken into consideration. In other words, difficulty with social relationships appeared to be making a unique contribution to many boys’ adjustment as adolescents.
How can this information be useful to you? The very important conclusion that emerges from this study is just how critical children's peer relations are to their long term development. It is clear that children who have difficulty making friends and getting along with peers - regardless of whether or not they also have ADHD - are at increased risk for a variety of negative developmental outcomes.
Sometimes, it is easy for parents to focus primarily on children's grades and their behavior at home and with other adults, and to lose sight of how their child is succeeding or not succeeding in the peer arena. Paying attention to how your child is faring socially, and trying to get him or her help in this area if they are struggling, however, can be one of the most important and helpful things that parents can do.
There are several ways that parents can be helpful to their child in this regard. First, you may have to take an active role in trying to arrange play activities for your child (this applies more for younger children, of course, than for adolescents). This can be quite helpful in assisting your child in developing a good friendship. If you know that your child has difficulty with social skills - e.g. sharing, compromise, turn taking, etc., you may need to actively supervise the play times to try and make sure that things go okay and to help get things back on track when they start going downhill. Reviewing with your child the kinds of things that will help him or her to be a better friend - both before and after the play session - can also be helpful in getting your child to try and focus on these important issues.
You should also be aware that their is a specialized type of treatment called "social skills" training that is specifically geared towards helping children learn the kinds of skills they will need to do well socially. In many communities, these groups are offered on a private basis by child psychologists.
The point to emphasize is how important it is to pay close attention to how your child is doing with friends and with peers. Helping your child to make and keep even a single good friend can make a significant difference to your child's development.

Ten Ways Girls with an ASD differ to Boys with an ASD by Sue Larkey

1. Their special interests are usually animals, music, art, literature.
2. They often have a very good imagination which includes imaginary friends, games, being animals or taking on persona of other girls.
3. They often see speech therapists for their speech and may be diagnosed with specific language disorders however there is something different about this girl no one can quite put their finger on.
4. They often play with older children or much younger children. This play is sometimes unusual for example ‘Mums and Dads’ but she will want to play the same role and game every time. She usually wants to be the pet or baby, whereas most girls want to be the Mum or Dad.
5. They often have hyperlexia – the ability to read but comprehension does not always match their reading skills. They are often the class book worm or write stories but they write the same story over and over changing a few characters. Many have a special interest in literature.
6. They have unusual sensory processing, like the boys, however bigger fluctuations often going from one extreme to the other.
7. They get anxious like boys, however their anxiety is rarely physical or disruptive. In fact many have great copying mechanisms at school however the family see a very different child at home where the anxiety can explode.
8. Often their difficulties with social skills are called ‘shy’, ‘quiet’, ‘solitary’.
9. They often like to organize and arrange objects. I watched one little girl spend hours seemingly playing "My Little Ponies" however on closer examination she was just arranging and re-arranging the horses over and over.
10. The main difference is there are MANY more undiagnosed girls/women than boys/men. Currently we only diagnose 1 girl to 7 boys. In the future it is thought by many psychologists the ratio could be more like 5 to 7 as we become more aware of this group.