Autism in social communication

What is autism?

A neurodevelopmental condition, brain develops atypically, emerges in early adulthood

Gender ratio for autism

affects men 3:1

How does autism affect the population

Affects 1/100

What are the 3 social communication impairments needed for an autism diagnosis?

Impaired non-verbal communication e.g., eye gaze

Impaired social-emotional reciprocity- less likely to engage in JA, issue with social nuance and understanding when someone is upset

Impairment in developing, maintaining and understanding relationships

What are the restrictive behaviours commonly found in autism and how many are needed for autism?

Repetitive movements, objects or speech (stimming)

Intense and unusual interests

Insistence on sameness, inflexible routine, ritualised behaviours, deep upset at broken routines

Sensory diffs

Categorically an explanation should

Have explanatory power

Unique to autism

Be universal

Baron-Cohen: Tom in autism 1985

Autistic people have no ToM

Compared autistic, neurotypical and down syndrome individuals on sally-Anne test

80% autistic individuals failed, 15% of neurotypical failed, 14% down syndrome failed

Criticism of Baron-Cohen’s theory

Can use logic for sally-Anne autistic individuals who passed probably wouldn’t do well in real life mentalising

What inspired Sensu 2009?

Previous research that found 25 month old infants look in anticipation where individuals with false belief would

What Sensu et al 2009 find?

Autistic adults showed no preferential looking in the same methodology, suggests no false belief attributed to actor

Lack of spontaneous ToM

Criticism of Sensu

There’s no grading of mentalising in either ToM test

Abell 2020

Measured ToM using Frith-Happe animations, found autistic people gave far more inappropriate mentalising attributions

Testing ToM: Universal

NO: 20% could pass false belief tests

Testing ToM: Unique

NO: Deaf people have issues with ToM

Testing ToM: Explanatory power

Doesn’t explain all behavioural symptoms, Absence ToM lead to breakdown in social communication

Does not explain restrictive behvaiours

What is executive function?

A mental toolbox of cognitive processes that are important for flexible, goal-oriented behaviour especially in novel situations

What does executive function include?

Planning ability, working memory, inhibition, cognitive control

What is executive function theory?

Hill 2004: Autistic children have issues with aspects of EF

EF Inhibition: Stroop test

Russell 2003- No Stroop impairment but impairment with windows task

What is the windows task in EF?

requires participants to infer the utility of indicating a box in which a desired object is absent, adjacent to one where it is visible

EF: Planning

Ozonoff 1991: Autistic children struggle with Tower of London task

Ef: Cognitive flexibility

Shu et al 2001: Autistic children struggle with Wisconsin card sort task- struggle with the rule changing

Testing EF: Universal

NO

Testing EF: Unique

Other clinical groups show EF impairments e.g., ADHD impaired in inhibition

Testing EF: Explanatory power

NO

Does not explain social communication differences

Poor EF explains restrictive/repetitive behaviours e.g., poor inhibition= repetitive movements

Poor cognitive flexibility explains repetitive behaviours