Cognitive Flexibility Among Individuals with Autism

Many specific types of behaviour are commonly associated with autism. The kid who finds it hard to stop being annoying, even if they were yelled at. A conversation lasts only as long as one doesn’t feel uncomfortable with the supposed autistic individual, which translates to 5 seconds. One might say that their behaviour is the result of the challenges with cognitive flexibility. While this case could be true, there should be precautions in diagnosing deficits just through behavioural observation. Occurrences such as these in actual research could lead to the field of autism being overgeneralized. This could provide inaccurate information for future autistic patients. 

Cognitive flexibility is defined as the ability to alternate between various cognitive processes in order to change one’s behaviour to be appropriate to the context the individuals find themselves in. Having this ability is useful in a multitude of social environments, where it may be needed to adapt to different surroundings, different from the usual. Individuals who exhibit this trait are seen to form better relationships with others. A number of researchers who focus on ASD have asserted that cognitive flexibility is associated with anxiety and depression outcomes in autistic patients. Indeed, while the rate for each is 42% and 37% respectively, in autistic individuals, in normal people, the rates are lower, at 34% and 30%. By pinpointing cognitive flexibility as a cause, this could help redirect treatment for autism to be aimed at relieving this deficit. 

While cognitive flexibility deficits may be responsible for the lower cognitive adaptation, the behaviour that autistics do exhibit is meant to help reduce stress. That may be a reason why those without the disorder find them unsettling, because the higher amounts of stress lead them to perform more stress-reducing behaviours than a regular individual. However, a comparison between those with and without the condition can also help explain the “strangeness” of their actions: even in non-autistic individuals, behaviour becomes more repetitive when anxiety levels are higher. Accordingly, this could question whether cognitive flexibility deficits are responsible for behavioural flexibility deficits. Repetitive behaviours could be a coping method for an elevated condition, which those without autism do not need to suffer through, rather than the “result” of autism. 

The social functioning challenges faced can be reduced if individuals around them create a less stressful environment where autistic individuals can better in. When they can’t fit in, this forces them to resort to the practice of social camouflage. This basically encourages engagement in strategies such as hiding social and communication difficulties in order to present a non-autistic profile and assimilate to the surroundings. The autistic individual is pressured to take on a new personality because they want to be treated equally, as others are treated. They face exhaustion, burnout, and other mental challenges as they attempt this method to better “fit in” to social environments. The mental health struggles must be endured to facilitate such, which could add another layer of unnecessary stress for autistic individuals. This has led to conclusions that cognitive flexibility may also be responsible for an increase in social camouflaging. 

The stress within those with the condition is extended to perceived stress, or the recognition of how stressful their standard of living is and the amount of resources to mitigate such a burden. Traditionally, more stress means greater levels of anxiety and depression. Even the anticipation of stress and the worries about the lack of support can exacerbate these conditions further. There is uncertainty about the role that cognitive flexibility has regarding these factors, but there is some evidence that cognitive flexibility and perhaps social flexibility, the ability to alternate between different social interactions, can regulate the effect of perceived stress on anxiety. However, cognitive flexibility was shown to be more responsible for many associations than social flexibility. For example, while cognitive flexibility could reduce the effect that social camouflage had on anxiety, social flexibility could not. In the presence of stress, the reduction in the ability to change between cognitive processes is likely to increase the likelihood of exacerbating anxiety and depression. Changing behaviours by changing the cognitive process could help avoid an activity that leads to further anxiety or depression. Additionally, the mediation of the effect that stress had on anxiety and depression was greater by means of cognitive flexibility than social flexibility. Therefore, cognitive flexibility is a better indicator of whether anxiety or depression is present in greater levels due to its lack it. Anxiety and stress could actually contribute to social flexibility deficits. As said before, greater anxiety means greater repetitiveness in behaviours, making it less likely for those individuals to be able to alternate between various social interactions effectively. The cause of the physical behaviour of autistic individuals is pinpointed to internal mechanisms failures. 

However, the question of whether a deficit of cognitive flexibility is truly responsible for the mental health challenges of ASD patients has no definite answer. While pretending that the answer is “yes” gives researchers an easier pathway to finding treatment for the disorder, there’s also evidence that suggests that treating cognitive flexibility deficits isn’t the way to go. Although, just through everyday observations alone, it seems that the behavioural rigidity results from cognitive inflexibility, there’s little implementation of real science to support this conclusion. It’s more of a theoretical concept that makes sense to the common individual but has few actual implications. Indeed, this finding that focusing on cognitive inflexibility oversimplifies the disorder is supported through that challenges regarding working memory and inhibition are also characteristics of autism. This results from the heterogeneity of the autism spectrum. The official name of autism is autism spectrum disorder, which suggests the many different types of disorders with various causes and effects under one name. While autistic disorder is a common type, ASD also includes asperger syndrome and HFA (high functioning autism). The use of autism in many contexts overgeneralizes the pervasive cognitive and behavioural rigidity when there’s a broader range of disorders that can also be considered as ASD. This is how an autistic individual is stereotyped, with them being restricted in their behavior and interests. In general, the point is proven that ASD needs more research before researchers jump to conclusions such as that cognitive flexibility can help fix the issues faced. A suggested method to do such is compare ASD supposed effects with other neurodevelopmental disorder(s), like ADHD, to truly differentiate out the unique characteristics of ASD such as  by comparing the levels of cognitive flexibility.