ACADEMIA Letters Investigation of Executive Functioning in Autism Spectrum Disorder Eleni Alexandropoulou, College for Humanistic Science - ICPS, Athens, Greece Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex brain disorder characterized by impairments in some executive functions. Executive functions play an important role in individuals’ daily life, due to the fact that they support social communication and interaction. This paper investigates which executive functions are impacted and how on people who sufer from ASD. In many cases, cognitive theories and research links autism to dysfunction of the prefrontal cortex and more specifcally to impairments to “cool” components of EFs, such as inhibition and shifting, while damages to “hot” components of EFs are still not clearly defned. However, studies reveal that neurotransmitters like dopamine seem to have an impact on other brain areas that are involved in autism including the amygdala, cerebellum, and parietal lobe. Defnition of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impairments in some abilities of the executive functions, including social communication and interaction, as well as restricted interests and repetitive behaviors, across the lifespan (American Psychiatric Association, 2013; Carotenuto et al., 2019; Demetriou, DeMayo & Guastella, 2019). A person can be diagnosed with ASD, at the age of 18 months, but often, most patients are not diagnosed until the age of 5 years (Casanova, 2014). Although once, ASD was considered a rare disorder, research shows that, during the last years, the male to female ratio is close to four to one (Demetriou, et al., 2019; Loomes, Hull & Mandy, 2017). That is the reason why, there is an increasing interest in understanding gender diferences and Academia Letters, June 2021 Corresponding Author: Eleni Alexandropoulou, el.alexandropoulou@gmail.com Citation: Alexandropoulou, E. (2021). Investigation of Executive Functioning in Autism Spectrum Disorder. Academia Letters, Article 1226. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1226. 1 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0