Medical Student Research Forum Posters

Autistic adolescents frequently exhibit cognitive control (or executive function) deficits for which the field lacks ecologically valid measures. The Map task is a new measure that has been validated in assessing the functional capacity of children at clinical high risk for psychosis, a pre-psychotic phase that shares similar deficits in communication and executive function with autism. This suggests it could be used in autistic children to measure similar cognitive deficits. We report preliminary results with these goals: 1) Examine whether autistic participants show impairments on the Map task compared to age, gender, and IQ-matched non-autistic participants, 2) Examine associations between Map task performance and another test of similar construct, the NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery. 3) Investigate associations between Map task performance and the Adaptive Behavior Assessment System-3 (ABAS-3), a measure of adaptive functioning.