Advisor(s)
Rajesh Kana
Committee Member(s)
Cassandra Newsom
Sarah O'Kelley
School
College of Arts and Sciences
Document Type
Thesis
Department (new version)
Psychology
Date of Award
1-6-2025
Abstract
Social functioning difficulties are often seen in autism and impact one’s ability to engage in meaningful social interactions and to maintain social relationships. Emerging research suggests that executive function (EF) impairments may underlie these social challenges, though the neural mechanisms involved remain unclear. The current study aimed to investigate the relationship between the functional connectivity of the executive control network (ECN) and social functioning in autistic children using resting-state functional MRI (rsfMRI) data. Resting-state fMRI data was obtained from 95 autistic participants (ages 5-13 years) from the publicly available Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange II (ABIDE-II) database. Data were preprocessed using fMRIPrep, and seed-to-voxel functional connectivity analyses were performed to examine the relationship between ECN connectivity and Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) Social Communication Index (SCI) raw scores. Results indicated that after controlling for demographic variables (age, sex, FSIQ, and data collection site), connectivity between the ECN and the rest of the brain were not significantly associated with SRS SCI scores. However, consistent with prior research, post-hoc analyses showed that global EF impairments, as measured by the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF GEC), significantly predicted social communication difficulties. Overall, these findings suggest that a relationship between EF and social functioning was present in the current sample; however, it was not significantly evident at the neural level. Future research should explore the potential utility of task-based fMRI to capture the dynamic nature of EF, which may be more directly related to social functioning. Additionally, studies should investigate different types of EF measures—both direct and informant-based—to better understand how they relate to ECN connectivity.
ProQuest ID
Recommended Citation
Kurtz, McKayla, "The Role Of The Executive Control Network In Social Functioning In Autism" (2025). All ETDs from UAB. 7266.
https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/etd-collection/7266
