Reliability and validity of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test in studies of autism.

Children with ASD may be less motivated by social than non-social rewards.

“This finding is consistent with previous research examining the effect of reward type on task performance, which indicates that children with ASD may be less motivated by social than non-social rewards [480,565-568].”

The traditional WCST scoring system cannot distinguish among these cognitive processes.

“None of these processes can be distinguished by the traditional task scoring system [24–26].”

WCST failure can result from deficits in multiple cognitive processes, including learning from feedback, maintaining the goal, noticing a needed strategy change, inhibiting a previous response, switching responses, and sustaining responding.

“Failure on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task can be because of deficits in various cognitive processes including learning from feedback, keeping the goal of the task in mind, noticing that a change in strategy is necessary, inhibiting a previous motor response, switching to another response and sustaining responding over time.”

Failure on the WCST may be due to social-motivational factors.

“For example, failure on the WCST might be because of social-motivational factors [25,26]”

Individuals with ASD perform better on a given task when presented by computer rather than live administration by an experimenter, whereas typically-developing comparison groups perform similarly across modalities.

“multiple studies have reported that individuals with ASD perform better on a given task when presented by computer rather than live administration by an experimenter, whereas typically-developing comparison groups perform similarly across modalities”

Children with ASD have been found to perform better on EF tasks that use computerized rather than live administration by an examiner, which has been attributed to reduced social demands.

“As discussed in the introduction, children with ASD have been found to exhibit better performance on EF tasks that employ computerized versus live administration by an examiner (Kenworthy et al., 2008;Ozonoff, 1995;Pascualvaca et al., 1998), which has been attributed to the reduced social demands required of them.”

Computerized testing reduces the social demands of face-to-face interactions for children with ASD.

“The computerized testing modality was used to decrease the social demands of face-to-face interactions for children with ASD, as suggested by prior research on set-shifting in this population (e.g., Ozonoff, 1995;Pascualvaca et al., 1998).”