Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) involves a broad presentation of symptoms classified along continuum of severity, with core deficits in Social Affect and Restricted, Repetitive Behaviours required for formal diagnosis (American Psychiatric Association, 2013; Lauritsen, 2013). The development of particular cognitive, behavioural and interpersonal difficulties seen in ASD is of great interest. Temperament offers particular value given that it influences the development of social behaviours, emotionality and self-regulation (Shiner et al., 2012). The self-regulatory temperament factor, effortful control, is known to be diminished in ASD (Garon et al., 2009, 2016) and is theorised to be related to attention and executive functioning (Rothbart & Rueda, 2005). This link is of particular interest, given that attention and executive function deficits are prominent in ASD (Craig et al., 2016; Lai et al., 2017; Sanders, Johnson, Garavan, Gill, & Gallagher, 2008). To date, however, a thorough literature search failed to yield a study which has investigated whether effortful control,attention and executive functioning are concurrently associated with ASD symptomatology.Moreover, the relationship between effortful control, attention and executive functioning is not as unambiguous as previously theorised in typical development, with little investigation into these relationships in ASD. To elucidate the association effortful control, attention and executive functioning have with ASD symptomatology, the relationship between effortful control and these cognitive variable needs to be better established empirically. Therefore the current investigation’s aims were twofold. Study One investigated the relationship of effortful control with attention and executive functions in neurotypical and ASD samples. Study Two explored the association between effortful control, attention, executive functions and core ASD deficits (i.e. Social Affect and Restricted, Repetitive Behaviours). A sample of 38 ASD and 38 neurotypical boys (aggregate-matched on key demographic factors), aged 6 - 15, and their primary caregivers were recruited. Study One considered both groups (n=76) and featured both quasi-experimental and relational investigations. Study Two focused only on the ASD sample (n=38) and used a purely relational design. Neurocognitive measures were used to assess two attention domains (i.e. attention span and sustained attention), and three executive functions (i.e. working memory, inhibition and switching). Effortful control was measured using a parent-report questionnaire and ASD core deficits were examined using the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, Second edition (ADOS-2; Lord, Luyster, Gotham, & Guthrie, 2012). Results of Study One revealed effortful control was a significant predictor of attention span, working memory and inhibition, with ASD participants performing significantly more poorly on these cognitive domains and rated significantly more poorly on effortful control. Study Two’s results indicated that Social Affect was significantly correlated with inhibition and the interaction effect between effortful control and working memory. Furthermore, only effortful control, attention span and their interaction effect were significantly associated with Restricted Repetitive Behaviours. Specifically, effortful control was found to moderate this relationship. At high levels of effortful control, increased attention span was associated with less Restricted, Repetitive Behaviours. These findings may aid efforts to establish a predictive model for ASD core deficits on the basis of temperament and cognitive difficulties. Keywords: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Effortful Control, Attention, Executive Functions, Social Affect, Restricted Repetitive Behaviours

Certaines conditions de l'environnement sonore semblent perturber la communication, l'apprentissage, la mémoire et la réalisation d'une tâche cognitive effectuée à l'école, à l'université ou au bureau. Nous nommerons bruit, un son ou groupe de sons désorganisés, provoquant une gêne psychologique et/ou cognitive. De nombreuses études ont montré que le bruit peut avoir des conséquences graves sur les performances d'étude ou de travail, pouvant occasionner des perturbations de l'attention dédiée à une tâche, ainsi que des erreurs ; seuls certains bruits rythmés et d'un faible niveau sonore semblent amener une légère amélioration des conditions de travail (Cooke, 2006). Il semble qu'on ne dispose pas de recherches approfondies sur l'influence des nuisances sonores sur les comportements et les fonctions exécutives, ces dernières, impliquées dans de nombreux aspects de la cognition, recouvrent l'ensemble des fonctions nécessaires au contrôle et à la réalisation de tâches complexes nouvelles et non automatiques. Elles rassemblent les opérations qui permettent la mise en oeuvre et le contrôle de l'action. Introduit par Luria (1966), ces fonctions orchestrent l'ensemble des opérations cognitives (le langage, le calcul, la mémoire, etc.) afin qu'il y ait une mise en adéquation de l'objectif avec le plan d'action concret, fonction d'intégration qu'assure le cortex préfrontal (Levy R, 2009). Tout amène à penser qu'une nuisance environnementale, d'intensité importante, constitue un facteur additionnel de charge cognitive, en particulier chez les sujets anxieux particulièrement sensibles aux stimulations environnementales, qui peut affecter fortement leurs capacités de traitements des informations et de mémorisation, ainsi que l'allocation de leurs ressources attentionnelles. Le bruit peut aussi être à l'origine de symptômes d'agression de même que le stress ou l'absence de comportement d'aide et de courtoisie (Pahlavan, 2002). Donc le bruit augmente les comportements agressifs. Notre recherche vise à étudier les effets de la nuisance environnementale sur les fonctions exécutives et les comportements agressifs, dans un contexte interculturel franco-syrien. / Certain conditions of the noisy environment can disrupt the communication, learning process, memory and cognitive task realization at school, university or even at office. Noise is defined as unorganized sound or a group of sounds that prompt psychological and/or cognitive embarrassment. Many studies revealed that noise could cause serious consequences on studying or working performance causing perturbations to the concentration needed to execute a task and making mistakes as well. However, some rhythmic noises of weak acoustic level seem to bring a moderate amelioration to work conditions (Cooke, 2006). It seems that there are not extensive researches on the influence of noise on the behavior and the executive functions that are implied in many aspects of cognition and covering all the necessary functions for controlling and realizing nouvelle complex non automatic tasks. These functions gather all the operations that allow performing and controlling the action. In order to make a consistence between the objective and the concrete action plan, executive functions orchestrate all the cognitive operations including language, calculation, memory, etc. (Luria, 1966, Levy R, 2009). Overall, an environmental noise of significant intensity constitutes an additional factor to the cognitive load, especially for the anxious persons who are particularly sensible to the environmental simulations. This can extensively affect their capacities of memorization and information treatment, and the allocation of their attention resources, consequently. The noise may also be the source of aggression symptoms as large as the stress or the absence of helping and courtesy behavior (Pahlavan, 2002). Therefore, the noise increases the aggressive behaviors. Our research focuses on studying the effect of the environmental noise on the executive functions and the aggressive behaviors in a Franco-Syrian intercultural context.

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Thesis advisor: Ellen Winner / Cognitive control, the ability to limit attention to goal-relevant information, subserves higher-order cognitive functions such as reasoning, attention, planning and organization. Counterintuitively, deficits in these functions have proven advantageous in certain contexts: low cognitive control means less filtering of attention, and such unfiltered attention leads to novel solutions in insight problem solving contexts. Insight is the clear and often sudden discernment of a solution to a problem by means that are not obvious, and it plays an indispensable role in creative thinking. This study examined whether insight problem solving is a compensatory advantage for children of low socioeconomic status because of their known deficits in cognitive control. One hundred and forty-eight children ages 4 to 11 years old, each completed two insight problem solving tasks (the Box Problem and the Pencil Problem) and a cognitive control task (the Flanker/Reverse Flanker). In addition, their parents completed a sociodemographic questionnaire, which was used as a measure of their socioeconomic status and child rearing values of obedience versus independence. No association was found between children’s socioeconomic status and their ability to use insight to solve a problem. Results did show that older children exhibited less cognitive flexibility than did to younger children, and that diminished cognitive flexibility correlated with older children’s ability to solve the Box Problem; however, this effect did not hold when age, sex, race, socioeconomic status, and parental report of obedience versus independence, were accounted for. Ultimately, age was the only significant predictor of children’s insight problem solving ability, such that older children were significantly more likely to solve the Box Problem and to arrive at a solution more quickly for the Pencil Problem compared to younger children. Findings from this study are explained using evidence from research on children’s tool innovation showing that young children are poor at inventing tools, and that older children’s ability to use objects for atypical functions may be the result of their greater exposure to and experience with tools. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Psychology.

Patients seeking help for hypersexual behavior often exhibit features of impulsivity, cognitive rigidity, poor judgment, deficits in emotion regulation, and excessive preoccupation with sex. Some of these characteristics are also common among patients presenting with neurological pathology associated with executive dysfunction. These observations led to the current investigation in which differences across scores on objective neuropsychological tests of executive functioning were explored in a group of hypersexual male patients (n = 30) compared with a non-hypersexual community sample (n = 30) of men. Using multivariate statistics, differences between the groups were examined yielding significant differences on measures of hypersexuality. However, the groups failed to exhibit significant differences across neuropsychological tests of executive functioning. These results contradict a previous finding of executive deficits among hypersexual men measured by self-report. These findings are discussed as they pertain to conceptualizations of hypersexual populations and possible implications for future research.

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Findings on executive functions (EFs) in binge-eating disorder (BED) are inconsistent and possibly biased by associated comorbidities. This study aimed to identify whether distinct levels of physical and mental comorbidity are related to EFs in BED. General and food-specific EFs in n = 77 adults with BED were compared to population-based norms and associations with weight status, depressive symptoms, and eating disorder psychopathology were analyzed. To detect within-sample patterns of EF performance, k-means clustering was applied. The results indicated that participants’ general EFs were within the average range with slight deficits in alertness. While depression and eating disorder psychopathology were unrelated to EFs, weight status was associated with food-specific attentional bias that was significantly higher in obesity class 2 than in overweight/obesity class 1 and obesity class 3. Four meaningful clusters with distinct strengths and impairments in general and food-specific EFs but without differences in clinical variables were identified. Altogether, adults with BED showed few specific deficits compared to normative data. Performance was unrelated to depression and eating disorder psychopathology, while weight status was associated with food-specific EFs only. The results highlight the need for longitudinal studies to evaluate the relevance of EFs in BED development and maintenance in neurologically healthy adults.

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