Lecture 9 - neurodivergence in development and autism

What alters typical development

Motor cognitive socio emotional

What are the causes of developmental conditions

Chromosomal abnormalities - genetic mutation (Down syndrome)

Prenatal factors (damage in womb - cerebral palsy)

Unknown combination - genetic, environmental, psychological, neurological

What are the early descriptions of autism

Lower IQ, inability to relate to others (autistic aloneness), upset by changes (desire for sameness)

Wing and Gould train of impairments

What are wing and Gould triad of impairment

A - social interaction (lack eye contact, failure to form peer relations)

B - communication (language delay)

C restricted repetitive patterns of behvaiour (narrow interests)

What is the description and diagnosis of Autism

Diff characteristics varying severity, may show islets of ability, 3x more diagnosed in men

What is islets of ability

=to/ better than neurotypical people

What are the causes if autism

Hereditary - twin and family studies

Structural differences in brain

But there is no clear neurological or genetic explanation

What are the problems with diagnosis

Diagnosis based in behavioural criteria, some signs appear early but normally seen around 3+yrs

Increase in numbers - due to better diagnostic material

Developmental outcomes highly variable - could be diagnosed at early age but have different development trajectories which could indicated the influence of a confound

What are the traditional theories of autism

Executive functioning - could be impairment on executive control which can cause repetitive/restricted behaviours

Weak central coherence - typically developed individual tend to have global processing of stimuli, autistism - more likely to have bias to featureless info/ details

How does theory of mind deficit lead to social impairment

Limits social understanding, intepretation of behaviour, communication, explain sameness and routine

How can Sally Anne false belief task be applied to autism

Only 20% of autistic children able to answer correctly

What did baron Cohen find in their behavioural stories experiment

Autistic children able to order and explain mechanical and behavioural stores but had difficult ordering mentalistic stories

What is the limitations of theory of mind

Not all children fail tasks

How to make theory of mind tests more complicated

second order belief - some autistic children able to complete task and able to answer where does Anne think sally will look for the marble

Strange stories task - read short story and asked why a character say something they don’t mean (white lie, jokes)

How did baron and Conner test for how autistic children inferred mental states from eyes alone.

Presented with eyes and had to choose the correct emotions. Found that autistic group significantly impaired to TD group and Tourette syndrome - is it really testing for ToM as autistic people have argued they can tell what people are feeling they just use diff cues

How have theories had real world consequences

Offensive ignorant flawed and can easily be debunked with modern context - gernsbacher and Yergeau

What did gernsbacher and yergeau find

Founded failure of specifity, universality, validity and replicability in the theory of mind

What is entailed in failures of sepecifity and universality

Many non autistic children fail these tasks - td espiecially if they have fewer siblings and adult relative nearby

Not all autistic participants fail these task

ToM relies heavily on spoken language - vocab predict performance more than age

What is entailed in failures of replicabilty and validity

Unable to replicate earlier findings like baron and Cohnen

Small sample sizes

Does performance on ToM tasks predict socioemotional function

What explains diff between autistic and non autistic

Double empathy problem - have diff styles in communication also explained by Mitchell transactional model

What is Mitchell’s transactional model

2 way exchange between person and environment

How does Shepard et al explain differences

NA able to identify condition for other NA but autistic people are as expressive bu not in compliments