Neurocognitive characteristics of psychotic symptoms in young adults with high functioning autism

•We sought to address the question of autism and psychosis overlap.•We assessed subjects with autism with and without psychotic symptoms.•We chose tasks known to be preserved in high functioning autism but not in psychosis.•Interference management is the most likely measure to differentiate participants.

Autism and schizophrenia are severe neurodevelopmental disorders. Recent findings from several studies suggest that these disorders share some common features at the biological, psychosocial and cognitive level. We have chosen to focus on a specific subgroup of autism spectrum disorders (ASD), individuals with high functioning autism (HFA), owing notably to the specific difficulties associated with differential diagnosis between individuals with autism and schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD) in the case of normal intelligence. In particular, we sought to investigate the extent to which neuropsychological and neurocognitive components could be specific in diagnosed participants with HFA who later developed SSD symptoms. We assessed a group of participants with HFA diagnosis and a group of participants who had first received an HFA diagnostic then were diagnosed with schizophrenia spectrum disorder during late adolescence. Results show that interference management is the most likely variable to discriminate the two groups. The findings are discussed in terms of similarities or discrepancies between ASD or SSD-like processes and clinical implications.