Orientation to time, place, and person is a central aspect of cognitive functioning. Measures of orientation, as employed in the psychiatric mental status examination, evaluate the accuracy of orientation in present awareness, and are applicable only to severely disturbed psychiatric populations in whom obvious deficits would be expected. The…

Subjects with autism (n=36) were assigned a simple "reach, grasp, and place" task. Comparison with nonautistic children who had mental retardation and younger normally developing children found that the autistic subjects had problems in executing goal-directed motor acts even in very simple situations, suggesting an independent and marked…

A correlational study of 62 8th grade, 60 11th grade, and 58 college students investigated developmental differences in learning goals, study strategy beliefs and their inter-relationship for science classes. Questionnaires measured levels of task orientation, ego orientation, and work avoidance, as well as belief in the utility of two types of…

This paper presents four studies which illustrate the variety of deficits in executive function displayed by individuals with autism. The concept of executive function is used to encompass all the mental operations which are involved in self-reflective and goal-directed behavior. Four forms of executive control are addressed: mental disengagement,…