Figure 7.
Additional behavioral experiment. The current study assumed that the ADHD-like traits in autistic individuals are related to cognitive overflexibility and inversely correlated with their RRB score. We indirectly examined this assumption with a behavioral experiment employing 30 TD adults. A, We first confirmed a significant negative correlation between their ADHD-like hyperactivity, which was measured by CAARS, and their ASD-like RRB trait, which was calculated as a summation of “Attention switching” and “Attention to details” scores in AQ. B, Second, we quantified the cognitive rigidity, an inverse form of cognitive flexibility, using a spontaneous task-switching test. This test allows us to quantify cognitive rigidity by counting how many same tasks the participants repeated spontaneously. C, The cognitive rigidity was associated with the RRB score in AQ and inversely correlated with the hyperactivity score measured by CAARS. D, A partial correlation analysis indicates that both the RRB score in AQ and hyperactivity score in CAARS would be behavioral manifestations of cognitive rigidity. *pBonferroni < 0.05.