Executive function deficits in autistic adolescents and young adults, from the parent's perspectives
A January 2026 study published in Discover Psychology examined how executive function deficits manifest in the daily lives of autistic individuals through parental observation rather than laboratory assessment. Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay conducted semi-structured interviews with 25 parents of autistic adolescents and young adults aged 14 to 25 years, analysing their accounts through thematic coding to identify patterns in real-world functioning.
Executive function encompasses higher-order cognitive processes including planning, organisation, sustained attention, information processing, and adaptive strategy shifting. The three core components — response inhibition, working memory, and mental flexibility — have been studied extensively in clinical settings, but research shows inconsistent results regarding which aspects prove most problematic for autistic individuals in applied contexts.
The study addressed a specific gap: whilst standardised measures like the Behaviour Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF) provide quantitative data on executive function challenges, they often fail to capture the nuanced, context-specific ways these deficits impact daily social interactions.
Binary or scaled response formats cannot describe the emotional context of behaviours, the compensatory strategies families develop, or environmental triggers that influence executive function performance that are all — equally, if not sometimes more — important to understand.
Parents described not just where deficits existed, but how they cascaded through social relationships, academic performance, and emotional regulation. The findings revealed that response inhibition difficulties created the most visible daily challenges, working memory deficits undermined task completion and conversation maintenance, and mental flexibility limitations triggered anxiety and emotional distress when routines changed.
Response inhibition identified as the primary barrier — impulsivity, interruption, and social rejection
Response inhibition — the capacity to suppress inappropriate responses and delay gratification — emerged as the most prominent executive function challenge in parental reports. One hundred per cent of parents described constant struggles with impulsivity, whilst 88% reported frequent interruptions during conversations.
A parent illustrated the pattern: “My son interrupts others when they are talking so frequently that he does not allow people to finish a conversation at all. At times, he is too impatient to wait for his turn to speak, and at other times, his thoughts cannot help but come aloud even before he realises he is doing it.” The parent noted that reminders to wait proved ineffective, as the adolescent continued making interruptions regardless of repeated instruction.
These behaviours carried social consequences beyond the immediate disruption. Parents consistently reported that peers and other adults interpreted interruptions and impulsive comments as rude or intentionally aggressive, leading to social rejection and progressive isolation. What presented as a cognitive control deficit — inability to inhibit prepotent responses — translated directly into relationship deterioration.
The study documented how impulsivity manifested across contexts. During family meals, adolescents would interrupt with tangential topics unrelated to ongoing conversation. In academic settings, they spoke without raising hands or waiting to be called upon. In peer interactions, they made inappropriate comments without considering social context, creating friction that peers experienced as hostile instead of just unintentional.
Parents described this pattern as self-perpetuating.
Social rejection increased anxiety. Increased anxiety reduced already limited inhibitory control. Reduced control led to more frequent interruptions and impulsive behaviour. More disruption generated additional rejection. The cycle continued without intervention that addressed both the cognitive mechanism and the social environment interpreting it.
So there’s a real sense of there being a genuine difference and difficulty in their child, while feeling so out of control with that circumstance that it’s reduced to a perpetrator-witness dynamic that continues to spin in one direction: further away.
Ninety-two per cent of parents reported their adolescent displayed impulsive behaviour “always” when rated on frequency scales, whilst 96% noted their child showed minimal awareness of having interrupted or acted impulsively. This awareness gap complicated attempts to develop self-monitoring strategies, as the adolescent often didn’t recognise when inhibitory failure had occurred.
Working memory challenges in daily functioning — retention, comprehension, and preparation difficulties
Working memory deficits — difficulties retaining and manipulating information over short periods — created distinct patterns of functional impairment that parents described as pervasive across daily activities.
Ninety-two per cent of parents reported constant problems with retention. A parent explained: “My daughter has the most trouble remembering what she has to do in the morning before heading off to school every day. I tell her: get dressed, brush your teeth, pack your bag. Sometimes she forgets what order those are in, or she sits there and forgets one of the two things, or she just sits there and does not remember what I told her to do.”
The pattern extended beyond simple forgetfulness. Eighty-four per cent of parents reported comprehension difficulties during conversations, where the adolescent appeared unable to fully process information being shared in real time. This created a compounding problem: limited working memory capacity meant they couldn’t hold conversational threads long enough to formulate relevant responses, leading to either silence or tangential comments that suggested they hadn’t tracked the discussion.
Parents described how working memory limitations affected preparation for daily activities. Tasks requiring multiple steps — getting ready for school, completing homework assignments, preparing meals — broke down because the adolescent couldn’t maintain the full sequence in active memory long enough to execute it. Even with written lists, they reported difficulties tracking which steps had been completed versus which remained.
Seventy-two per cent of parents reported their adolescent “always” forgot things they needed to do, even shortly after being reminded. This necessitated constant external scaffolding from family members, creating what parents described as exhausting monitoring demands. The emotional burden extended beyond the adolescent’s frustration to include parental stress from providing continuous prompting and the family disruption caused by incomplete tasks and missed commitments.
The conversational implications proved particularly significant. Maintaining dialogue requires holding what has already been said whilst formulating responses and anticipating where the exchange might proceed. Parents noted their adolescents struggled with this simultaneity, often losing track of earlier points whilst trying to process current information. This made extended conversations difficult to sustain and contributed to social withdrawal, as the cognitive effort required exceeded available capacity.
Mental flexibility deficits and rigid thinking — adaptation struggles and emotional dysregulation
Mental flexibility — the capacity to shift attention, adapt to changing circumstances, and adjust behaviour based on new information — presented challenges that parents described as emotionally demanding for both the adolescent and the family system.
Ninety-six per cent of parents reported their adolescent struggled to adjust to changes in routine or plans. Eighty-eight per cent noted constant difficulty shifting between tasks or switching focus when required. This rigidity manifested across contexts, from resistance to changing conversation topics to emotional dysregulation when daily schedules varied from expected patterns.
A parent described the typical presentation: “My son has difficulty handling changes to his routine and transitions. He often gets very upset and struggles to respond quickly and change his behaviour when things happen differently than he expected. Even if I have to tell him we are going to a different place than he planned, I notice he becomes anxious and unsettled.”
The inflexibility extended to cognitive perseveration. Parents reported adolescents getting “stuck” on particular topics, continuing to ask about previous activities even after moving to entirely different contexts. One parent noted: “He can get very stuck in a situation, where he keeps asking about the very last activity we were physically doing, even though we are far away from that point. He just wants to be loyal to what he knows, even when it is time to move on.”
This cognitive rigidity created cascading effects on emotional regulation. Seventy-six per cent of parents reported their adolescent “always” failed to adapt to changes in plans or expectations. The inability to flexibly adjust thinking patterns when circumstances changed triggered anxiety, frustration, and in some cases emotional meltdowns that disrupted family functioning and prevented participation in social activities.
Switching between tasks proved particularly problematic. Parents described needing significant time and effort to transition their adolescent from one activity to another, even when the adolescent had been prepared in advance for the change. The level of engagement with current activities made disengagement cognitively demanding, and attempts to force transitions often resulted in increased distress rather than smooth adaptation.
The social implications mirrored those documented for response inhibition and working memory deficits. Inability to shift conversation topics when others’ interest waned, difficulty adjusting to changing social contexts within group interactions, and rigid adherence to preferred subjects all contributed to peers experiencing the autistic adolescent as difficult to interact with — not because of intentional obstinacy, but because the cognitive architecture supporting flexible adaptation was limited.
Why parental reports reveal what standardised assessments miss
The study’s central contribution lies not in identifying that executive function deficits exist in autistic individuals — extensive research has established this — but in documenting how these deficits operate in ecologically valid contexts where social, emotional, and environmental factors interact with cognitive limitations.
Laboratory-based assessments and standardised questionnaires like the BRIEF measure executive function components in isolation or through predetermined item sets. A parent can indicate on a scale that their child “often” or “always” demonstrates impulsivity. What the scale cannot capture is how that impulsivity manifests during family dinner when the adolescent interrupts repeatedly with tangential topics, how siblings respond with frustration, how parents attempt intervention, how the adolescent experiences shame afterward, and how this pattern repeats across contexts until social isolation becomes the path of least resistance.
Parents in the study described not just deficits but systems. Response inhibition failures didn’t occur as discrete events but as patterns embedded in relationship dynamics, peer rejection cycles, and family stress while trying to interact and interface “normally” and “typically” with institutional and societal systems and structures.
Working memory limitations didn’t present as abstract cognitive scores but as daily struggles to complete morning routines, maintain conversations with friends, and prepare for activities without constant external scaffolding. Mental flexibility challenges didn’t appear as performance decrements on task-switching paradigms but as emotional dysregulation when routines changed, anxiety about unpredictable social contexts, and rigid thinking that prevented adaptation even when the adolescent wanted to adjust.
The researchers noted that whilst standardised measures provide important normative data, they frequently overlook the heterogeneity and context-dependence of executive function profiles in autism. A child might perform adequately on a computerised response inhibition task in a quiet testing room but demonstrate severe impulsivity during unstructured social interactions where multiple stimuli compete for attention, emotional arousal is elevated, and social consequences of failure feel immediate.
Parental reports revealed another dimension standardised assessments miss: compensatory strategies and environmental accommodations that families develop through trial and error. These adaptations often mask the severity of underlying deficits when measured in clinical settings but reveal themselves when parents describe the scaffolding required for daily functioning. The adolescent who appears moderately impaired on formal testing may require extensive family support systems to achieve even that level of performance in real-world contexts.
The study demonstrates that understanding executive dysfunction in autism requires integration of quantitative measures with qualitative accounts of lived experience. Parents observe their adolescents across contexts, emotional states, and developmental periods in ways that time-limited clinical assessments cannot replicate. Their perspectives illuminate not just what deficits exist but how those deficits interact with social environments, emotional regulation systems, and family dynamics to either enable or prevent functional participation in daily life.
Citations
Dehnavi, F. & Iyer, S. (2026) — Executive function deficits in autism spectrum disorder analyzed through parental perspectives
