Development of this paradigm was supported by the Therapeutic Cognitive Neuroscience Fund and the Benjamin and Adith Miller Family Endowment on Aging, Alzheimer's, and Autism Research.

<ol>
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The author has nothing to disclose.

The present paper has reported critical steps in developing a semantic priming ERP paradigm with picture and word stimuli for exploring semantic processing deficits in individuals with ASD. Major steps include creating the stimuli, programming the task, and performing EEG testing and analyses. The most time-consuming part of this procedure is likely to be the creation of stimuli, as this requires careful matching both between and within stimulus pairs, conditions, and modalities on variables such as length, frequency, an...

Researchers in cognitive psychology have long been interested in how people understand the meaning of language. Language processing involves a sequence of steps of increasing complexity, from letter and word recognition, to semantic processing, to syntactic parsing. Semantic processing refers to accessing the meaning of a stimulus, be it a word, picture, or sound. Following early steps of initial word recognition, access of a word&#39;s meaning, or semantics, is a crucial step in language processing. Semantic integration refers to the process of integrating the meaning of stimuli to understand their relationships, and is crucial for higher-level language processing such as understanding sentences. Not only does the meaning of each word in a sentence need to be accessed, but the meanings of each individual word need to be integrated to form a coherent understanding of sentence meaning, or &#34;gist&#34;.
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often have significant deficits in language comprehension1. There is some evidence suggesting that these difficulties stem from deficits in semantic processing and integration2,3,4. However, other studies have suggested that individuals with ASD do not show semantic processing deficits when materials are presented in non-linguistic (e.g., visual or auditory) modalities3,5,6. Such findings suggest that semantic processing deficits in ASD may be restricted to linguistic (i.e., written or spoken) modalities. As such, approaches that contrast different modalities may provide insight into the extent to which semantic processing deficits are domain-specific or indicative of a pervasive processing style. The purpose of this paper is to describe a methodology for comparing semantic processing between different modalities using a semantic priming task during concurrent electrophysiological recording.
The semantic priming paradigm has a long history in research investigating how semantic processing influences lower-level word recognition7,8. In traditional semantic priming tasks, a prime word is presented (e.g., cat) followed by a target word that is either semantically related (e.g., dog) or unrelated (e.g., book) to the prime. Such a task is often done in the context of a lexical decision task, such that participants are asked to determine whether the target word is a real word or not. Other paradigms may have participants perform a semantic categorization task on the target word, or judge whether the two stimuli are related or not. Regardless of the specific task, decades of evidence have established that reaction times (RTs) are faster to target words that are semantically related to the prime compared to those that are unrelated.
This &#34;semantic priming effect&#34; has been attributed to a number of mechanisms in theoretical accounts7,8. One is that the priming effect is due to automatic spreading activation through the semantic network, such that the retrieval of the prime word&#39;s meaning activates the meaning of other semantically related words, including the target word. This then reduces the time needed for semantic activation of the target word. A second theoretical mechanism is that of expectancy, which posits that upon seeing the prime word, participants generate an expected set of potential targets. Target words that are included in this set are then recognized more quickly. Finally, others have postulated the existence of a post-lexical mechanism of semantic matching, which establishes the existence of a semantic relationship between the prime and target word. Regardless of the specific mechanism underlying the effect, semantic priming can be a useful index of semantic processing and integration. This paradigm is also not limited to lexical stimuli, and can also be used to investigate semantic priming of non-language stimuli like pictures9 as well as cross-modal semantic priming (e.g., between words and pictures)3.
Semantic priming effects have been well-studied in the psycholinguistic literature, and have been investigated with regards to the type of prime-target relations, the timing of prime and target presentation, and many other manipulations8. The electrophysiological correlates of this effect have also been well-characterized10. Electroencephalography (EEG) is a method of recording neural activity via changes in electrical activity measured at the scalp. EEG is a useful choice of methodology for a semantic priming paradigm because it has very good temporal resolution (on the order of milliseconds, ms) and can thereby provide subtle differences in semantic processing between conditions or groups even in the absence of behavioral effects or responses.
Event-related potentials (ERPs) are time-locked changes in the EEG that arise in response to a specific stimulus or behavior. Depending on the timing and polarity of the response, different components of the ERP are reflective of different aspects of cognitive processing. The N400 component is a well-established marker of semantic processing and semantic integration11,12 (although several other interpretations exist10,13). The N400 amplitude is reduced when semantic integration is easier (such as when the prime and target in a semantic priming paradigm are semantically related) compared to when semantic integration is more difficult (such as when two words are unrelated). Importantly, the amplitude difference between related and unrelated conditions (i.e., the &#34;N400 effect&#34;) is not specific to language. N400 effects are also observed in non-language modalities, such as in response to pairs of semantically-related and unrelated pictures or environmental sounds14,15,16,17. The N400 is thus a useful ERP component for the purposes of the current paradigm because it can be used as a modality-independent estimate of semantic processing and integration abilities.
Individuals with ASD show reduced or absent semantic priming effects and N400 effects in response to language stimuli2,3,4, suggesting impairments in semantic processing. Such effects have been found in response to visuo-semantic and audio-semantic stimuli3,5,6, lending support to the claim that semantic processing is selectively impaired for language stimuli. However, most previous studies comparing modalities have used cross-modal priming, such that the prime-target pair contains a lexical stimulus. Given the proposal that individuals with ASD have deficits in semantic processing of language stimuli, such cross-modal stimuli may have affected results. To truly investigate whether semantic processing of language is selectively impaired in individuals with ASD, within-modality pairs of lexical and non-lexical stimuli must be used. In a recent study, Coderre et al.6 provided the first direct comparison of within-modality word and picture semantic priming to investigate semantic processing deficits in adults (ages 18-68) with ASD. Participants with ASD and typically-developing (TD) participants viewed pairs of pictures and words and were asked to judge whether the stimuli were related or not. During this semantic priming task, their brain activity was recorded using EEG. By comparing N400 effects between groups and modalities, this paradigm provided insight into the nature of semantic processing in individuals with ASD.
The purpose of this paper is to describe the semantic priming ERP methodology employed by Coderre et al.6. Although this paradigm was initially implemented to study semantic processing in adults with ASD, it may prove useful for any experimenters wishing to explore the neural correlates of lexico-semantic and visuo-semantic processing, either in TD individuals or in specific clinical populations.

<table><tbody><tr><td>EEG system</td><td>Electrical Geodesics, Inc. (EGI)</td><td></td><td>Geodesic EEG system (GES) 400 system: Net Amps 400 amplifier, NetStation 5.3, 128-channel HydroCel Geodesic Sensor nets</td></tr><tr><td>Potassium chloride</td><td>Electrical Geodesics, Inc. (EGI)</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Plastic bucket</td><td>Electrical Geodesics, Inc. (EGI)</td><td></td><td>EGI provides a plastic bucket for mixing electrolyte but any clean container can be used</td></tr><tr><td>Baby shampoo</td><td>Johnson&#039;s</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP)</td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

a semantic priming event-related potential (erp) task to study lexico-semantic and visuo-semantic processing in autism spectrum disorder

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have characteristic deficits in understanding the meaning of language, or semantic processing. However, some evidence indicates that semantic processing of non-linguistic stimuli is intact, suggesting that semantic deficits may be language-specific. To appropriately characterize semantic processing deficits in individuals with ASD, comparison of within-modality linguistic (e.g., written words) and non-linguistic (e.g., pictures) stimuli is required. This paper describes such a methodology that makes use of a semantic priming paradigm during concurrent recording of electroencephalographic (EEG) data. EEG provides a dynamic measure of brain activity that is well-suited to characterize subtle differences in semantic processing that may not be observable at the behavioral level. The semantic priming paradigm presents a prime picture or word (e.g., dog) followed by a target picture or word that is either related (e.g., cat) or unrelated (e.g., pencil) to the prime. This paradigm can thus be used to evaluate semantic processing across different modalities, and to compare lexico-semantic and visuo-semantic processing abilities in individuals with ASD and how they might differ from TD individuals. The specific steps involved in creating the stimuli, performing the EEG testing, and analyzing the EEG data are discussed. Representative results illustrate how the N400 component of the event-related potential (ERP) is reduced following semantically-related prime-target pairs compared to unrelated pairs. Comparisons of the N400 between conditions, modalities, and groups can provide estimates of the success of semantic processing, and can thereby be used to characterize semantic deficits in individuals with ASD or other clinical populations.

If stimuli have been appropriately sorted into related and unrelated conditions, an N400 effect should be observed for both word and picture stimuli (Figure 2). This is identifiable as a greater negative amplitude in unrelated conditions compared to related conditions. For word stimuli, the effect should occur from 300&#8211;500 ms over central or centro-parietal scalp6,10. For picture stimuli, the ef...

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A Semantic Priming Event-related Potential ERP Task to Study Lexico-semantic and Visuo-semantic Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder

This paper describes a semantic priming ERP task using within-modality pairs of pictures and words to investigate semantic processing in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

A Semantic Priming Event-related Potential (ERP) Task to Study Lexico-semantic and Visuo-semantic Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have characteristic deficits in understanding the meaning of language, or semantic processing. However, ...

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10.5K Views.  University of Vermont. This paper describes a semantic priming ERP task using within-modality pairs of pictures and words to investigate semantic processing in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Video: A Semantic Priming Event-related Potential ERP Task to Study Lexico-semantic and Visuo-semantic Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Investigating the Effects of Antipsychotics and Schizotypy on the N400 Using Event-Related Potentials and Semantic Categorization

Within the field of cognitive neuroscience, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a popular method of visualizing brain function. This is in part because of its excellent spatial resolution, which allows researchers to identify brain areas associated with specific cognitive processes. However, in the quest to localize brain functions, it is relevant to note that many cognitive, sensory, and motor processes have temporal distinctions that are imperative to capture, an aspect that is left unfulfilled by fMRI&#8217;s suboptimal temporal resolution. To better understand cognitive processes, it is thus advantageous to utilize event-related potential (ERP) recording as a method of gathering information about the brain. Some of its advantages include its fantastic temporal resolution, which gives researchers the ability to follow the activity of the brain down to the millisecond. It also directly indexes both excitatory and inhibitory post-synaptic potentials by which most brain computations are performed. This sits in contrast to fMRI, which captures an index of metabolic activity. Further, the non-invasive ERP method does not require a contrast condition: raw ERPs can be examined for just one experimental condition, a distinction from fMRI where control conditions must be subtracted from the experimental condition, leading to uncertainty in associating observations with experimental or contrast conditions. While it is limited by its poor spatial and subcortical activity resolution, ERP recordings&#8217; utility, relative cost-effectiveness, and associated advantages offer strong rationale for its use in cognitive neuroscience to track rapid temporal changes in neural activity. In an effort to foster increase in its use as a research imaging method, and to ensure proper and accurate data collection, the present article will outline &#8211; in the framework of a paradigm using semantic categorization to examine the effects of antipsychotics and schizotypy on the N400 &#8211; the procedure and key aspects associated with ERP data acquisition.

Using event-related EEG potentials (ERPs), we investigate the effects of antipsychotic medications on abnormal semantic brain activations in healthy individuals with schizotypal traits. We use ERPs to track distinct changes in brain activity, shedding insight into the cognitive processes associated with semantic categorization.

Within the field of cognitive neuroscience, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a popular method of visualizing brain function. This is in ...

Testing Sensory and Multisensory Function in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

In addition to impairments in social communication and the presence of restricted interests and repetitive behaviors, deficits in sensory processing are now recognized as a core symptom in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Our ability to perceive and interact with the external world is rooted in sensory processing. For example, listening to a conversation entails processing the auditory cues coming from the speaker (speech content, prosody, syntax) as well as the associated visual information (facial expressions, gestures). Collectively, the &#8220;integration&#8221; of these multisensory (i.e., combined audiovisual) pieces of information results in better comprehension. Such multisensory integration has been shown to be strongly dependent upon the temporal relationship of the paired stimuli. Thus, stimuli that occur in close temporal proximity are highly likely to result in behavioral and perceptual benefits &#8211; gains believed to be reflective of the perceptual system&#39;s judgment of the likelihood that these two stimuli came from the same source. Changes in this temporal integration are expected to strongly alter perceptual processes, and are likely to diminish the ability to accurately perceive and interact with our world. Here, a battery of tasks designed to characterize various aspects of sensory and multisensory temporal processing in children with ASD is described. In addition to its utility in autism, this battery has great potential for characterizing changes in sensory function in other clinical populations, as well as being used to examine changes in these processes across the lifespan.

We describe how to implement a battery of behavioral tasks to examine the processing and integration of sensory stimuli in children with ASD. The goal is to characterize individual differences in temporal processing of simple auditory and visual stimuli and relate these to higher order perceptual skills like speech perception.

In addition to impairments in social communication and the presence of restricted interests and repetitive behaviors, deficits in sensory processing are ...

Eye Tracking Young Children with Autism

The rise of accessible commercial eye-tracking systems has fueled a rapid increase in their use in psychological and psychiatric research. By providing a direct, detailed and objective measure of gaze behavior, eye-tracking has become a valuable tool for examining abnormal perceptual strategies in clinical populations and has been used to identify disorder-specific characteristics1, promote early identification2, and inform treatment3. In particular, investigators of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have benefited from integrating eye-tracking into their research paradigms4-7. Eye-tracking has largely been used in these studies to reveal mechanisms underlying impaired task performance8 and abnormal brain functioning9, particularly during the processing of social information1,10-11. While older children and adults with ASD comprise the preponderance of research in this area, eye-tracking may be especially useful for studying young children with the disorder as it offers a non-invasive tool for assessing and quantifying early-emerging developmental abnormalities2,12-13. Implementing eye-tracking with young children with ASD, however, is associated with a number of unique challenges, including issues with compliant behavior resulting from specific task demands and disorder-related psychosocial considerations. In this protocol, we detail methodological considerations for optimizing research design, data acquisition and psychometric analysis while eye-tracking young children with ASD. The provided recommendations are also designed to be more broadly applicable for eye-tracking children with other developmental disabilities. By offering guidelines for best practices in these areas based upon lessons derived from our own work, we hope to help other investigators make sound research design and analysis choices while avoiding common pitfalls that can compromise data acquisition while eye-tracking young children with ASD or other developmental difficulties.

Eye tracking has long been used to study gaze patterns in typically-developing individuals, but recent technological advancements have made its use with clinical populations, including autism, more feasible. While eye-tracking young children with autism can offer insight into early symptom manifestations, it involves methodological challenges. Suggestions for best practices are provided.

The rise of accessible commercial eye-tracking systems has fueled a rapid increase in their use in psychological and psychiatric research. By providing a ...

Medicine

Portable Intermodal Preferential Looking (IPL): Investigating Language Comprehension in Typically Developing Toddlers and Young Children with Autism

One of the defining characteristics of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is difficulty with language and communication.1 Children with ASD's onset of speaking is usually delayed, and many children with ASD consistently produce language less frequently and of lower lexical and grammatical complexity than their typically developing (TD) peers.6,8,12,23 However, children with ASD also exhibit a significant social deficit, and researchers and clinicians continue to debate the extent to which the deficits in social interaction account for or contribute to the deficits in language production.5,14,19,25
Standardized assessments of language in children with ASD usually do include a comprehension component; however, many such comprehension tasks assess just one aspect of language (e.g., vocabulary),5 or include a significant motor component (e.g., pointing, act-out), and/or require children to deliberately choose between a number of alternatives. These last two behaviors are known to also be challenging to children with ASD.7,12,13,16
We present a method which can assess the language comprehension of young typically developing children (9-36 months) and children with autism.2,4,9,11,22 This method, Portable Intermodal Preferential Looking (P-IPL), projects side-by-side video images from a laptop onto a portable screen. The video images are paired first with a 'baseline' (nondirecting) audio, and then presented again paired with a 'test' linguistic audio that matches only one of the video images. Children's eye movements while watching the video are filmed and later coded. Children who understand the linguistic audio will look more quickly to, and longer at, the video that matches the linguistic audio.2,4,11,18,22,26
This paradigm includes a number of components that have recently been miniaturized (projector, camcorder, digitizer) to enable portability and easy setup in children's homes. This is a crucial point for assessing young children with ASD, who are frequently uncomfortable in new (e.g., laboratory) settings. Videos can be created to assess a wide range of specific components of linguistic knowledge, such as Subject-Verb-Object word order, wh-questions, and tense/aspect suffixes on verbs; videos can also assess principles of word learning such as a noun bias, a shape bias, and syntactic bootstrapping.10,14,17,21,24 Videos include characters and speech that are visually and acoustically salient and well tolerated by children with ASD.

Portable Intermodal Preferential Looking IPL: Investigating Language Comprehension in Typically Developing Toddlers and Young Children with Autism

A reliable home-based way to assess the language comprehension of very young typically developing children, as well as those with autism, is described. The method analyzes children's eye gaze while viewing side-by-side images but hearing an audio that matches only one image. Stimuli are designed with young participants in mind.

One  of the defining characteristics of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is difficulty  with language and communication.1  Children with ASD's onset of ...

An Electrophysiology Protocol to Measure Reward Anticipation and Processing in Children

We present a protocol designed to measure the neural correlates of reward in children. The protocol allows researchers to measure both reward anticipation and processing. Its purpose is to create a reward task that is appropriate for young children with and without autism while controlling reward properties between two conditions: social and nonsocial. The current protocol allows for comparisons of brain activity between social and nonsocial reward conditions while keeping the reward itself identical between conditions. Using this protocol, we found evidence that neurotypical children demonstrate enhanced anticipatory brain activity during the social condition. Furthermore, we found that neurotypical children anticipate social reward more robustly than children with autism diagnoses. As the task uses snacks as a reward, it is most appropriate for young children. However, the protocol may be adapted for use with adolescent or adult populations if snacks are replaced by monetary incentives. The protocol is designed to measure electrophysiological events (event-related potentials), but it may be customized for use with eye-tracking or fMRI.

This protocol is designed to measure reward anticipation and processing in young children with and without autism. Specifically, the protocol is designed to study the neural correlates of reward during social and nonsocial conditions while controlling for reward between conditions.

We present a protocol designed to measure the neural correlates of reward in children. The protocol allows researchers to measure both reward anticipation ...

Using the Visual World Paradigm to Study Sentence Comprehension in Mandarin-Speaking Children with Autism

Sentence comprehension relies on the ability to rapidly integrate different types of linguistic and non-linguistic information. However, there is currently a paucity of research exploring how preschool children with autism understand sentences using different types of cues. The mechanisms underlying sentence comprehension remains largely unclear. The present study presents a protocol to examine the sentence comprehension abilities of preschool children with autism. More specifically, a visual world paradigm of eye-tracking is used to explore the moment-to-moment sentence comprehension in the children. The paradigm has multiple advantages. First, it is sensitive to the time course of sentence comprehension and thus can provide rich information about how sentence comprehension unfolds over time. Second, it requires minimal task and communication demands, so it is ideal for testing children with autism. To further minimize the computational burden of children, the present study measures eye movements that arise as automatic responses to linguistic input rather than measuring eye movements that accompany conscious responses to spoken instructions.

We present a protocol to examine the use of morphological cues during real-time sentence comprehension by children with autism.

Sentence comprehension relies on the ability to rapidly integrate different types of linguistic and non-linguistic information. However, there is ...

Comparing Eye-tracking Data of Children with High-functioning ASD, Comorbid ADHD, and of a Control Watching Social Videos

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are known to have sensory-perceptual processing deficits that weaken their abilities to attend and perceive social stimuli in daily living contexts. Since daily social episodes consist of subtle dynamic changes in social information, any failure to attend to or process subtle human nonverbal cues, such as facial expression, postures, and gestures, might lead to inappropriate social interaction. Traditional behavioral rating scales or assessment tools based on static social scenes have limitations in capturing the moment-to-moment changes in social scenarios. An eye-tracking assessment, which can be administered in a video-based mode, is therefore preferred, to augment clinical observation. In this study, using the single-case comparison design, the eye-tracking data of three participants, a child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), another with comorbid attention deficit-hyperactive disorder (ADHD), and a neurotypical control, are captured while they view a video of social scenarios. The eye-tracking experiment has helped answer the research question: How does social attention differ between the three participants? By predefining areas of interest (AOIs), their visual attention on relevant or irrelevant social stimuli, how fast each participant attends to the first social stimuli appearing in the videos, for how long each participant continues to attend to those stimuli within the AOIs, and the gaze shifts between multiple social stimuli appearing concurrently in the same social scene are captured, compared, and analyzed in a video-based eye-tracking experiment.

This is a qualitative comparative case study analysis of eye-tracking data on the first moments of social video scenes as viewed by three participants: one with autism spectrum disorder, one with comorbid attention deficit-hyperactive disorder, and one neurotypical control.

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are known to have sensory-perceptual processing deficits that weaken their abilities to attend and perceive ...

Lexical Decision Task for Studying Written Word Recognition in Adults with and without Dementia or Mild Cognitive Impairment

Older adults are slower at recognizing visual objects than younger adults. The same is true for recognizing that a letter string is a real word. People with Alzheimer&#39;s disease (AD) or Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) demonstrate even longer responses in written word recognition than elderly controls. Despite the general tendency towards slower recognition in aging and neurocognitive disorders, certain characteristics of words influence word recognition speed regardless of age or neuropathology (e.g., a word&#8217;s frequency of use). We present here a protocol for examining the influence of lexical characteristics on word recognition response times in a simple lexical decision experiment administered to younger and older adults and people with MCI or AD. In this experiment, participants are asked to decide as quickly and accurately as possible whether a given letter string is an actual word or not. We also describe mixed-effects models and principal components analysis that can be used to detect the influence of different types of lexical variables or individual characteristics of participants on word recognition speed.

This article describes how to implement a simple lexical decision experiment to assess written word recognition in neurologically healthy participants and in individuals with dementia and cognitive decline. We also provide a detailed description of reaction time analysis using principal components analysis (PCA) and mixed-effects modeling.

Older adults are slower at recognizing visual objects than younger adults. The same is true for recognizing that a letter string is a real word. People ...

Interaction between Phonological and Semantic Processes in Visual Word Recognition using Electrophysiology

Controversies have always existed in research related to reading abilities; on whether printed words are perceived in a feedforward manner based on orthographic information after which, other representations, such as phonology and semantics are activated, or whether these are fully interactive and high-level semantic information affects early processing. An interference paradigm was implemented in the presented protocol of phonological and semantic judgment tasks that utilized the same precede-target pairs to explore the relative order of phonological and semantic activation. The high- and low-frequency target words were preceded with three conditions: semantically related, phonological-related (homophones), or unrelated. The results showed that the induced P200 component of low-frequency word pairs was significantly greater than high-frequency words in both the semantic and phonological tasks. In addition, both the homophones in the semantic task and the semantically related pairs in the phonological task caused reduction in N400 when compared to the the control condition, word frequency-independently. It is worth noting that for the low-frequency pairs in the phonological judgment task, the P200 released by the semantically related word pairs was significantly larger than that in the control condition. Overall, semantic processing in phonological tasks and phonological processing in semantic tasks were found in both high- and low-frequency words, suggesting that the interaction between semantics and phonology may operate in a task-independent manner. However, the specific time this interaction occurred may have been affected by the task and frequency.

We present a protocol to explore the relative activation sequence of phonology and semantics in visual word recognition. The results show that consistent with interactive accounts, semantic and phonological representations may be processed interactively, and higher-level linguistic representations may affect early processing.

Controversies have always existed in research related to reading abilities; on whether printed words are perceived in a feedforward manner based on ...

Executive Function in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Source: Laboratories of Jonas T. Kaplan and Sarah I. Gimbel&#8212;University of Southern California
Attention, working-memory, planning, impulse control, inhibition, and mental flexibility are important components of human cognition that are often referred to as executive functions. Autism spectrum disorder is a developmental disorder that is characterized by impairments in social interaction, communication, and repetitive behaviors. It is a disorder that lasts a lifetime, and is thought to affect 0.6% of the population. The symptoms of autism suggest a deficit in executive function, which may be assessed by specialized neuropsychological tests. By employing several tests that each emphasize different aspects of executive function, we can gain a more complete picture of the cognitive profile of the disorder. 
One such task, known as the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), is a cognitively complex task used widely in research and clinical studies as a highly sensitive measure of deficits in executive function. It tests a person's ability to shift attention and tests their flexibility with changing rules and reinforcement.1 In the WCST, a participant is presented with four stimulus cards, incorporating three stimulus parameters: color, shape, and number. The participant is asked to sort response cards according to different principles, changing their sorting criteria based on feedback from the experimenter. Participants try out different rules until they find the correct method for sorting the cards. Patients with executive dysfunction tend to get stuck in the card sorting task, unable to change their sorting strategy. This persistence with an incorrect strategy is called perseveration. 
A second task, The Tower of London (ToL) is a test dependent on complex planning, re-evaluation, and updating of planned moves. Individuals with autism have been reported to be impaired on tasks involving planning.2 In the ToL task, individuals must move disks from a prearranged sequence on three pegs to match a goal state in as few moves as possible, following specific rules. 
A third task, known as the Stroop test, targets cognitive inhibition. In this task participants are shown a name of a color, written in a different color, and are asked to identify the color the word is written in. For example, in an incongruent condition, the word blue would be written in green. Individuals with inhibition difficulty should not perform as well as typically developing individuals on this task involving inhibition of the written word.
In this video, we show how to administer the WCST, ToL, and Stroop task to compare flexibility, planning, and inhibition in children with autism spectrum disorder and typically developing counterparts, and explore how each of these groups performs on these different aspects of executive function.

Behavioral Tests to Assess Executive Functions in Children with ASD

Source: Laboratories of Jonas T. Kaplan and Sarah I. Gimbel&#8212;University of Southern California
Attention, working-memory, planning, impulse control, ...