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32 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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What is autism? |
pervasive neurodevelopment disorder characterised by qualitative impairments in social communication and imaginative behaviours presence of repetitive and stereotyped patterns of activity and interests clinic picture varies with age, ability level and severity considerable heterogeneity |
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What is the autistic triad? (behavioural level) |
socialisation - avoid social contact through to passive through to verbosely odd communication - no speech or gesture through to fluent but odd imagination - spin the wheels of toy car endlessly though to preoccupation with telephone directory or bus timetable symptoms cluster together and are considered sufficient and necessary for the diagnosis of autism regardless of severity level, age and ability level |
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at what age is autism typically diagnosed? |
18 months |
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What is the rate of autism in siblings of affected children? |
3-4% (low but higher than general population risk) |
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What is the heritability of autism in MZ twins, and the heritability of the 'broader phenotype' compared to DZ twins? (Bailey 1995) |
MZ autism: 60% broader: 90% DZ autism: 5% broader: 10% |
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What structural evidence is there for autism? |
macrocephaly (1/4 cases have unusually large head circumference) few gross abnormalities but pathologies pervasive |
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Which area of the brain for ASD people shows less activation? |
FFA to faces |
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What are the three main cognitive theories for autism? |
theory of mind deficit executive dysfunction weak central coherence |
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in the Sally Anne task (BAron-Cohen 1985): a) what kind of task is it? b) what % of autistic children fail compared to normal? |
a) false belief b) 80% fail 85% controls pass autistic children 'mind blind' ? |
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what is the classic modular view of theory of mind and autism? |
there is a TOM module that is malfunctioning in autism, and failure results in behavioural manifestations |
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What are the two problems for the TOM account? |
symptoms it can't account for (e.g. insistence on sameness)
experimental findings it can't account for sensitivity and specificity (some non autistic people fail task, some autistic people pass task) |
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Give 3 examples of unusual strengths and unusual weaknesses seen in ASD individuals? |
strengths: memory for word strings memory for unrelated items sorting faces by accessories recognising faces upside down weaknesses: memory for sentences memory for related items sorting faces by emotion recognising faces right way up |
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What is the sensitivity and specificity issue in the TOM account of autism? |
in the Sally-Anne task: 15% of non autistic children FAIL (specificity) 20% autistic children pass (sensitivity) but show failure on more advanced task - succeeding on tasks via compensatory strategies |
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What is an advanced TOM test? What are the results? |
'reading the eyes' try and read emotion of pictures of eyes (Baron-Cohen 1997) find that autistic adults less skilled at inferring mental state from eye region People with tourettes normal ability taken as evidence for subtle mindreading deficits in high functioning individuals with autism |
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What did Klin et al (2003) find for adults who even passed TOM tasks? |
adult viewers with autism focus on non essential inanimate details they are not drawn to faces in pictures |
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What more subtle results have been found and to suggest what TOM deficit in those with autism? (SENJI 2009) |
lack of spontaneous TOM compared 19 adults with Asberges and 17 controls - no difference in FB or TOM implicit stuff there very early and have to learn how to do explicit stuff in development - maybe for autistic adults this mirrors this developmental idea - learn how to find solution but do not have underpinning that healthy controls do |
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What DV on a false belief task in adults DID find differences that suggested some kind of deficit? SENJI 2009 |
in classic false belief task (17 AS and 19 NT) Contingency set up between B and C - the time between the lights coming on and the person searching for the toy in a certain location found that autism show less bias to look towards correct window in 6 second bin 8/19 autistic make correct first saccade in AS group, 13/17 in NT group NT - neurotypical |
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adults with AS do _____ _________ anticipate others actions, despite _______ standard measures of FB with ease |
not spontaneously passing |
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How do autistic adults deal with false belief tasks? |
verbally mediated reasoning rather than spontaneous encoding of socially relevant information compensatory strategy |
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What is the executive dysfunction explanation for autism? |
autism associated with similar profile to patients with executive disorder (planning, inhibition, flexibility) |
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Give a task that provides evidence for the executive function view of autism? |
performance of autistic individuals on the Windows task (inhibit pre-potent response) 16/17 point to baited window (3 years) 6/16 point to baited window (4 years) 9/11 point to baited window (autistic) so autistic don't learn to inhibit prepotent response |
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What is the cognitive complexity and control theory? |
both EF and TOM require higher order rule use 'i know that the object is in location B, but if i am asked about the doll, and thd question asks where will the doll look for the object, then the answer is A' |
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What did Zelazo (2002) find that individual differences in TOM correlated with? Outline the task |
individual differences in rule use on the Dimensional Change Cart Sort task Learn rule to criterion for card sorting (e.g. by colour) and then switch 3-4 year olds find switching difficult |
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What is the central coherence view of autism? What symptoms does this account help explain? |
Frith (1989)
normal processing characterised by a desire for central coherence (gist or gestalt preferred as we strive for overall meaning) Autism characterised by weak central coherence (local processing preferred over global processing) emphasis on parts of event and not a whole provides good account of NON-TRIAD symptoms such as obsessive desire for sameness |
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What is the embedded figures task? (Shah and Frith 1983) How do autistic children perform? |
provide stimuli varying in complexity and see ability to extract a simple shape from the structure the more complex the image the harder it is to extract find that autistic children are better at this and show islet of ability |
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What is the Block Design task? (Shah and Firth 1993) |
Have to form an object out of other blocks autistic children are better at this because lacking in central coherence, better placed to attend to parts than the whole |
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what are Shah and Frith's (1983) two tasks to test central coherence? |
embedded figures block design (testing prediction that ASD should be better at these tasks as they focus on parts) |
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What did Happe (1997) find to support central coherence theory with shapes? How did they match autistic to controls? drawback of this experiment? |
autistic children are less likely to fall for illusion (as predicted as if autism better placed to attend to parts than whole, then should be less susceptible to visual illusions) the experiment matched cognitive level (so ASD were about 13 and controls about 7) autistic children are not helped by 3D presentation - consistent with weak central coherence processing lack of replication by Ropar and Mitchell 2007 |
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What did Happe (1997) find to support CC theory at verbal-semantic level? drawback of experiment? |
compared pronunciation of homographs in and out of context e.g. there was a tear in her dress in her eye there was a tear Found that in controls better at gathering context and overall meaning so pronunciation reflects this methodological concerns |
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What are the two hypotheses that could explain face processing in autism? is there general consensus? |
social hypotheses: reduced interest/motivation to process faces (domain specific) non-social hypotheses: differences in general processing (process specific) NO! only two studies have performed the criterion that Ewing (2013) said was necessary for robust conclusions - and found different results! |
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In Ewing's (2013) study on face processing in ASD,
a) what was his sample b) what ws the design of the experiment c) what were the findings d) what hypothesis of face processing does this go against |
a) 40 controls and 40 autism children b) for faces and cars, had Stimulus A and Stimulus B, and then middling stimuli which would be e.g. 40% A and 60% B (varied this morph to test discrimination). Also did a memory task c) on the discrimination accuracy: found that autistic children were globally (general) impaired on face, car and inverted face discrimination (by not huge amounts) on the memory task: found that autistic children again were impaired on faces and cars (to large degree) and also on inverted faces (typical controls not very good either) goes AGAINST social hypothesis - no evidence for selective face processing reduced social motivation unlikely to be only view |
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Multiple deficits account - what is it? |
rather than trying to discover the cognitive cause of autism, more appropriate to consider autism as comprising multiple cognitive deficits, the manifestation of which depends on complex interactions between different parts of strength and weaknesses autism is heterogenous multiple risks factors |
