Physical exercise is widely reported beneficial to executive functions in children with autism spectrum disorder. However, its impact on self-regulation in the population remains unknown. This study is to test whether two types of physical exercise (cognitively engaging vs non-cognitively engaging) benefited self-regulation and whether the social,…

Compared to their neurotypically developing peers, children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders tend to have attenuated neural responses in the parietal lobe when attending sensory input, as reflected by a reduced P3b amplitude measured with electroencephalography. However, it is unknown whether a reduced P3b amplitude in autistic…

There is a long tradition of research into autistic people's executive function skills. Yet, despite decades of research on EF in autism, the existing literature remains contradictory and 'confusing', with a large -- and unresolved -- discrepancy between small-to-moderate effect sizes demonstrated on laboratory-based EF tasks and large effect…

Prospective memory helps us to remember to perform tasks in the future. Prospective memory can be either time or event based. The goal of this study was to determine time- and event-based prospective memory in autistic adults across the life span. Autistic (n = 82) and non-autistic (n = 111) adults, aged between 30 and 86 years, performed the…

Mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, aggression, and inattention are common in autistic youth and are challenging to treat by community providers. We aim to parse the heterogeneity of autism based on dimensions of executive function and determine whether specific executive function profiles are differentially related to…

Anxiety has been associated with social communication and interaction differences among autistic children. We sought to clarify the direction of these associations longitudinally, and test executive function as a moderator. Participants were autistic children (N = 157; 15% female, 85% male) engaged in a longitudinal study. Analyses focused on two…

Working memory functions as an underlying force for school readiness, yet many autistic children have difficulties with it. Similarly, autistic children tend to start kindergarten with less school readiness compared with their peers. In addition, children from lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds face additional barriers in working memory…

Individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are more likely to have suicidal thoughts and behaviors. However, little research delineates the temporal and mechanistic associations between potential risk factors and suicidality in autistic individuals. We assessed 129 autistic and 121 age-matched and sex-assigned-at-birth-matched…

Autistic individuals are at significantly higher risk of suicide than non-autistic individuals, with transition-aged youth at potentially the highest risk. While lower executive function (EF) skills have been significantly associated with suicide risk in other clinical samples, the link between EF and suicidality has not yet been examined for…

A growing body of research suggests that mindfulness-based interventions may be a valuable method for reducing internalizing symptoms in autistic individuals. The current study extends this work using an effectiveness-implementation hybrid type 1 study. In this parallel randomized controlled trial, we examined a novel telehealth intervention for…

The mediators of real-world executive functions in autism during the transition into adulthood are mainly unknown. This study aimed to identify the mediators for the behavioral and cognitive domains of real-world executive functions in late adolescent and young adult autistic populations. We followed up 289 autistic children (aged 11.6 ± 3.8, male…