Overlapping in memory profiles in Spanish children with autism spectrum disorders, developmental language disorders, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Abstract

Neurodevelopmental disorders do not have biological markers that allow for their identification. This means that in most cases, diagnosis is based on behavior. This approach implies that difficulties will exist in establishing the diagnostic boundaries of the different nosological entities, and it argues that neurodevelopmental disorders probably share neuropsychological deficits. Our main objective was to study whether neurodevelopmental disorders share a common endophenotype. We carried out a study of memory in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), Developmental Language Disorders (DLD), and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). For this purpose, we administered an extensive neuropsychological battery to evaluate memory to 24(ASD), 25(DLD), and 25(ADHD) children. The results obtained by these three clinical groups were contrasted with those obtained by a group of 25 children of typical development (TD). TD group performed better in all memory tasks, except the recognition task than the clinical groups, and the clinical groups showed slight differences among themselves in their performance in memory tasks. These results show that memory deficits could represent a common endophenotype at least in these three neurodevelopmental disorders and emphasize the need to intervene in memory disorders in this population.