The Relationship between Executive Functioning and Emotional Intelligence in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) demonstrate marked deficits in the ability to initiate, maintain and sustain meaningful social interaction. While the social-emotional deficits represent a core set of problems, persons with ASD also demonstrate significant problems in initiating, sustaining and maintaining appropriate goal directed behaviors. Emotional Intelligence (EI) is a construct that has been successfully applied to a range of skills that allow for the prediction of competent human social behavior. Executive Functions (EF) refer to constructs involving cognitive abilities necessary for initiating, sustaining and maintaining purposeful goal-oriented behavior. While both children and adults with ASD have previously shown to have atypical patterns of EF skills, little is known about EI in either children or adults with ASD. Moreover, there is no study examining the relationship between EI and EF that has been reported in individuals with ASD. The current study examined the relationship between EF and EI in children with ASD. Twenty children with ASD were compared to twenty neurotypical children on self-report and clinical assessments of EI and EF. Although the relationship between EF and EI was not statistically significant, results showed that children with ASD have deficits in interpersonal skills, intrapersonal skills and overall EI when compared to their neurotypical peers. These results suggest that EF and EI are relatively independent domains of development that show compromise in persons with ASD and each may be necessary to support typical socially directed behaviors.


Introduction
Social interaction deficiencies and communication problems are among the most pronounced in children with ASD ( Baron-Cohen, Leslie & Frith, 1995) [1] and often the first area of intervention for practitioners. Children with ASD often play alone, have difficulty in initiating and sustaining play with other children, and show limitations in social imagination (Seitz, Travis & Sigman, 2005) [2]. Moreover, their capacity is reduced for recognizing and responding to the emotional states of others.
EI refers to the ability to assess and engage the emotions of one's self, of others and of groups (Mayer, 1997) [3]. The somatic marker hypothesis suggests that deficits in the emotional signaling functional system (somatic states) lead to poor judgment in decision-making, especially in the personal and social realms (Bar-On, Tranel, Denburg & Bechara, 2003) [4]. This system is necessary to facilitate social interaction, imaginative activities, and the use of emotions for social communication and has been hypothesized to comprise an area of social abilities known as emotional intelligence (EI).
Individuals with ASD show social deficits that would suggest impairment in two general areas of EI: intrapersonal and interpersonal skills. Intrapersonally, children with ASD show a deficit in the ability to discriminate among emotions, overtly label emotions, utilize emotions to guide their own behaviors and effectively control affective range and intensity (Begeer, Rieffe, Terwogt, Meerum & Stockmann, 2006) [5]. Interpersonally, children with ASD show difficulties in correctly decoding other people's feelings, intentions, and motivations, correctly recognizing personal characteristics in others (e.g., age, gender, and ethnicity) and influencing others to behave in desired ways (Dalrymple, 1992) [6].
Neurobiological and neuropsychological evidence suggest that the significant range of social deficiencies observed in individuals with ASD may be more effectively viewed as the abnormal development of a distinct functional brain system (McAlonan, Cheung, Suckling, Lam, Tai, Yip, Declan and Siew, 2005) [7]. One such system includes to so-called executive functions that are believed to be subserved by the frontal cortex and appear to be responsible to help regulate the capacity for initiating, sustaining and maintaining goal directed behaviors. Early work by Pennington and Ozonoff (1996) [8] and others (Lopez, Lincoln, Ozonoff, & Lai, 2005) [9] showed that persons with ASD show atypical patterns of EF regulation and suggested that impairments or the atypical organization of such functions could account for impaired social and behavioral functioning in persons with ASD.
Despite the fact that EF has been studied extensively in individuals with ASD, there is still limited research in the area of EI and individuals with ASD and even sparser research examining the correlational link between EF and EI. Currently, neurobiological and neuropsychological research supports the idea that EF and EI are linked by way of subcortical structures [7]. Furthermore, [4] found that when compared to controls, patients with lesions in the neural circuitry post-Open Journal of Psychiatry ulated to be involved in EF and EI, displayed low EF and EI scores as assessed by standardized testing. Unfortunately, the research examining the neural circuitry has been limited to non-ASD individuals, suggesting a need for further research in this area with a developmentally-delayed subpopulation.
The current study was designed to evaluate whether children with ASD would achieve lower scores on measures that reflect the following executive functions: cognitive flexibility, inhibition, initiation of problem solving, concept formation and spatial planning. Emotional Intelligence was also predicted to differ between autistic participants and control participants. Finally, it was predicted that the relationship between EF and EI would differ between children with ASD and neuro typical control children.

Measures
Demographic Questionnaire (e.g. age, gender) was administered to all participants. ASD diagnosis was confirmed using ADOS, a semi-structured instrument used to assess for ASD; and GARS, a structured instrument used to additionally asses for ASD. IQ was assessed using WISC-IV, a cognitive assessment that gives a comprehensive picture of child's intellectual ability. EF was measured using the Delis Kaplan Executive Function System (DKEFS; Delis, Kaplan &Kramer, 2001) [15], a set of neuropsychological tests used to measure verbal and non-verbal EF for both children and adults. EI was measured using the BarOn Emotional Quo-Open Journal of Psychiatry tient-Inventory-Youth Version (BAR-ON EQi:Y-V; Bar-On & Parker, 2000) [16], a self-report focused on EI and social functioning.

Procedures
The first session was conducted with parents to complete informed consent, evaluate inclusionary and exclusionary criteria for each participant, demographic questionnaire and GARS. In a separate three hour session the child was administered the ADOS, D-KEFS, WISC-IV and the BAR-ON EQi:Y-V. The ADOS and WISC-IV were only given if it had not been given within the past year and/or scores from the most recent evaluation were unavailable.

Statistical Analysis
A one way ANOVA was used to determine between group differences for the

Descriptive Statistics
Children with ASD (N = 20) and neurotypical children (N = 20), all received intellectual testing, EF testing, and completed an EI self-report questionnaire. All of the control and experimental participants met the inclusionary and exclusionary criteria with the exception of one participant with ASD whose IQ score did not meet the inclusionary criteria.

Discussion
It has been long understood that the social impairment in individuals with ASD is often severe and a hallmark sign of the disorder. The primary purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between executive functions and emotional intelligence in children with ASD. Findings from this study replicated previous findings related to executive dysfunction in children with ASD and produced findings related to emotional intelligence in a developmentally delayed population.
The analysis conducted replicated previous findings showing that children with ASD display deficiencies in cognitive flexibility and planning. In the current study, autistic individuals performed significantly worse on tasks that required cognitive flexibility and planning. The deficits were most obvious on the trail making task; a task that requires set shifting ability and planning skills.
Moreover, there was a significant difference found on the color word inference task between the AD and the NC group. Specifically, it was found that on the switching tasks, autistic individuals performed significantly worse than the NC group. These findings support previous research findings that children with ASD have difficulty spontaneously restructuring their knowledge in adaptive response to radically changing situational demands.
It was also assumed that children with ASD would perform worse on the DKEFS Design Fluency task; a task that requires individuals to follow rule set to make designs. The results did not produce significant findings on the contrast measure, a measure that examines the difference between following simple in-Open Journal of Psychiatry connecting filled and empty dots. Upon exploratory analysis however, it was found that the AD group took more time to complete the designs and made more mistakes, which suggest a planning deficiency. This also suggests that processing speed may be an impediment with regards to their performance.
Moreover, the higher number of mistakes made by the AD group on this specific shows deficits in planning and perseveration are linked to the frontal and prefrontal areas in the brain and are often observed in children with ASD. The current study supported the previous research by showing that the AD group performed significantly worse than the NC group on the DKEFS Tower Test. Moreover, contrast measures showed that the AD group had more rule violations and took more time to complete towers. Additionally, the DKEFS Card Sort test resulted in the AD group generating significantly fewer sorts than the NC group. Contrast measures further showed that the AD group took more time to recognize and generate sorts, thus supporting difficulty with planning and spontaneous cognitive generation.
Furthermore, the current study looked at emotional intelligence, as a new emerging construct, and also what it looked like in a developmentally delayed youth population when compared to a normally developing youth population. Further, with an abundance of research supporting a somatic marker hypothesis (cortical under-connectivity), the study was designed to examine the relationship between executive functioning and emotional intelligence. Following emotional intelligence is a branch system of traits that includes intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligence, stress management and adaptability.
In the current study emotional intelligence would be shown to differ between autistic and non-autistic individuals. The findings suggested significant difference on the interpersonal scale between the two groups. Interestingly, the results indicated that the NC group obtained lower scores on the adaptability and stress management scales. The current study thought that cognitive flexibility and planning scores (main measures of executive functioning) would be significantly correlated to emotional intelligence scores. However, it was found that no significant relationship exists between the global indices of each of the variables. Additionally, when specific skill sets of emotional intelligence and individual components of executive functioning were analyzed, no significant correlations emerged.
Additionally, the study examined the ability of cognitive flexibility, inhibition and planning (executive functions) to predict emotional intelligence. The results showed that there were no significant correlations and neither planning, inhibition nor cognitive flexibility related to emotional intelligence.
The results of this study supported previous research findings that children with ASD display marked deficits in executive functioning when compared to non-autistic children [9]. More specifically, the results showed that children with ASD have specific impairments with the ability to spontaneously restructure their knowledge, in many ways, in adaptive response to radically changing situational demands. They showed deficits in the ability to initiate and stop actions, Open Journal of Psychiatry A further limitation was the restriction of diagnosis within the AD group.
Only 3 of the 18 children that were assessed were diagnosed with low functioning ASD; the remaining children were all diagnosed with high functioning ASD.
The phenotypical differences between children who are low and high on the continuum is markedly different as are their symptoms; therefore, it would be important for future research to look at the relationship between emotional intelligence and executive functioning in children all along the continuum.
Finally, another limitation of the study was the average sample size from which the data was derived. Due to the IQ exclusionary criteria, the recruitment efforts and participation reward, the study group size was limited. As a result of the average sample size, the present study may have limited statistical power to detect significant effects.

Conclusion
The present study supported previous research that children with ASD have executive functioning deficits; specifically, in the areas of planning, cognitive flexibility and inhibition. Although the current research did not support a predictive relationship between executive functions and emotional intelligence, it did add to the field of research in emotional intelligence. The findings suggest that even with a loosely operationalized construct, children with ASD, when compared to their normal peers, show deficits in their ability to relate to others, initiate and maintain interpersonal relationships, discriminate among their own emotions and the emotions of others and utilize emotions to guide their own behaviors.
This study did support the current debate about utilizing self-report as the only measure to assess emotional intelligence.