Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2024

DOI

10.3390/bs14100903

Publication Title

Behavioral Sciences

Volume

14

Pages

903 (1-10)

Abstract

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that influences an individual’s cognitive functions and social interaction. While most studies have focused on children and adolescents diagnosed with ASD, elevated levels of autistic traits in subclinical populations may also influence individuals’ daily functioning. Autistic traits are also linked to the Big Five personality. In particular, neuroticism (emotion instability) has been shown to be positively associated with autistic traits, which may contribute to behavioral symptoms of autistic traits. The present study aimed to investigate the association between autistic symptoms and sensorimotor processing among a subclinical population. One hundred young adults (Mage = 20.32 years; SD = 3.69 years; 69 female) completed a choice reaction time (RT) task, and their behavioral performance was analyzed using the ex-Gaussian modeling. The Autism Quotient (AQ) and the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) were used to assess autistic traits and neuroticism, respectively. The mediation analysis was conducted to examine the behavioral mechanism through which autistic traits influence sensorimotor processing. The results showed that the AQ score was negatively correlated with RT and positively correlated with neuroticism score. Importantly, the mediation analysis indicated an indirect effect, suggesting that neuroticism mediates the association between the AQ score and RT. The findings indicated a possible mechanism of the association between autistic traits and sensorimotor responses and suggested that neuroticism should be included as an intervention target for ASD. The present study contributes to the research on autistic traits and has practical implications for future intervention programs to improve daily functioning among individuals with ASD.

Rights

© 2024 by the authors.

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License.

Data Availability

Article states: "The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors on request."

Original Publication Citation

De Jesus Cintron, K., & Yang, X. (2024). Neuroticism mediates the association between autistic traits and choice reaction time among young adults. Behavioral Sciences 14, 1-10, Article 903. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs14100903

ORCID

0009-0005-4419-5131 (De Jesus Cintron), 0000-0001-6421-2051 (Yang)

Download

Share

COinS