Asperger Syndrome: Social functioning in relation to behavioural and cognitive traits from infancy to young adulthood

Sammanfattning: DOCTORAL DISSERTATION IN PSYCHOLOGY, 2011 Abstract Dewrang, P. (2011). Asperger syndrome: Social functioning in relation to behavioural and cognitive traits from infancy to young adulthood. Department of Psychology, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Asperger syndrome (AS) is a disorder within the autism spectrum and it is a lifelong disability that affects life in an amount of aspects. It is primarily characterized by impairment in social interaction, restricted patterns of interests and behaviour, speech and language peculiarities, and non-verbal communication problems. In this thesis the overall aim was to explore aspects of behavioural and cognitive qualities in a group of 14-24 year old individuals. A more specific aim was to retrospectively fmd, with help from the parents, if there had been early markers related to the diaguosis. Another was to analyse how the young persons perceive themselves, and a third and fourth, to explore the quality and intensity ofrepetitive behaviour and obsessive-compulsive features and investigate what impact deficits in attention may have on AS. The final aim was to investigate cognitive traits and understanding of social interaction. Tests, interviews, self- and parental evaluations were used. The results showed that there were significant differences in infancy between the AS group and a comparison group in all measured fields. "Food/feeding and sleep" and "Contact and social activity" were found to be the fields that caused most parental concern. The AS group had showed significant difficulties with repetitive and obsessive-compulsive features during the preschool and school years as reported by the young persons and their parents. This could be noticed in social settings of different kinds but also at home. No signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder or anxiety could be found. The young persons with AS revealed a qualitative different style when describing and discussing themselves. Their statements were more straightforward and less socially adjusted than comparisons. They also revealed lower self-worth and the most problematic area was "Relations to other people". The AS group showed significant symptoms of attention deficits and executive dysfunction but not on all tests that measured executive functions. The field "Managing frustration and modulating emotions" was considered by the young persons to be without problems but the parental evaluation showed disagreement. On the social cognition tests the AS group revealed social knowledge almost as good as the comparisons with two exceptions; white lie and empathy. In those tasks a relationai aspect that seemed difficult to grasp. On the whole it was possible to find the special features of AS in infancy and the features are in many cases also present in adolescence and young adulthood. Social tasks proved to be solved successfully in a "laboratory setting" but in a real life setting other aspects like body language and "hidden" messages are present and complicate the scene. Keywords: Asperger syndrome, attention, early diagnosis, executive function, parental concern, repetitive behaviour, self-perception, social cognition Petra Dewrang, Department of Psychology, University ofGothenburg, Box 500, 40530 Gothenburg, Phone: + 4631 7861658, E-mail: [email protected]