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Description
The most recent available data from the Centers for Disease Control suggest that 1 in 44 children are on the autism spectrum (AS), with prevalence estimates increasing from previous data. A core feature of AS is deficits in executive functioning (EF), including impairments in planning, cognitive flexibility, and working memory. Thus, there is a growing need for evidence-based assessments of EF for autism populations, yet the statistical models of many commonly used measures of EF, including the Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System (DKEFS), have not been investigated for an AS sample. The purpose of this study was to address a gap in the literature regarding the latent structure of the D-KEFS in a sample of autistic individuals. The D-KEFS is one of the most widely used clinical assessments of executive function, and its latent structure has been examined in typical samples and certain psychological disorders. However, there is currently no literature addressing the D-KEFS’ factor structure for AS. Reliability analyses were performed for sample subgroups based on participants’ clinical and demographic characteristics, including IQ, autism severity, age, and race/ethnicity. Across multiple subgroups Verbal Fluency was found to decrease or not affect the overall reliability score. Additionally, three models of EF, a one-, two-, and three-facto structure, were tested for the DKEFS with a sample of AS participants. The one- and three-factor models were not found to be a good fit for the data. However, the two-factor model, with Cognitive Flexibility and Abstraction latent factors, was found to fit the data relatively well. This two-factor model was reexamined excluding the Verbal Fluency observed variable, resulting in a better overall model fit. Communication deficits are a common feature of AS, which explains why the Verbal Fluency task, which requires participants to produce novel words, may not be an adequate measure of executive function for AS populations.
