Neuropsychological Profiles in Adults

This study intended to investigate whether Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), namely Asperger s Syndrome and High Functioning Autism, and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD), could be discriminated with respect to their neuropsychological profiles of executive function, attention and autistic traits. A further question was whether adults with ASD and comorbid AD/HD performed worse than adults with ASD or AD/HD alone. Several neuropsychological tests were conducted to cover these domains, controlling for gender, age and general crystallized intelligence. Concerning verbal fluency, performance of adults with ASD could be discriminated from that of adults with AD/HD. In general, it was indicated that comorbid ASD and AD/HD compensated deficits of each other, except for the executive function of cognitive flexibility, which showed additive deficiencies. Consideration of both disorders is essential to the implementation of effective treatments. However, the heterogeneity of these and previous results shows that neuropsychological assessment is useful for evaluating performance of individuals rather than for general differential diagnosis of ASD and AD/HD.