Neurodivergence in development

Developmental conditions

Motor

Cognitive

Socioemotional

Language matters

Causes of developmental conditions

Chromosomal abnormalities: genetic mutations, eg Down syndrome

Prenatal factors: damage while in womb, oxygen deprivation, eg cerebral palsy

Unknown combination: genetic, environmental, psychological, neurological

Person-first

Person with autism

Identity first

Autistic person

Early descriptions of autism

Low IQ

Autistic aloneness - inability relate to others

Desire for sameness - upset by changes

Wing and Gould triad of impairments (1979)

A: impairments in social interaction (lack of eye to eye contact, failure to develop peer relations)

B: impairments in communication (language delay, lack of varied make-believe play)

C: restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour (narrow interests, ritualistic behaviours)

Causes of autism

Hereditary component: some evidence from twin and family studies

Structural differences in the brain: connection or structural differences in the brain

problems with diagnosis

Some signs appear early

High variability in terms of what develops and when

Executive functioning

Planning, organising, impulse control

Impairment in EF can explain repetitive behaviours

Correlation between EF and ToM

Weak central coherence

TD people have the tendency to process incoming info globally

WCC = bias for featural or local information

Proposed to explain certain aspects of autism eg excellent rote memory

How might a ToM deficit lesd to social impairments

Limits effective social understanding

Makes it difficult to interpret behaviour of others

Makes it difficult to communicate

Might explain sameness and routine indirectly

Baron-Cohen (1985)

Sally Anne false belief task

Autism with mental age > 4

TD aged 4

Down syndrome with mental age > 4

Results: 80% of TD and DS solved, 20% of autistic group

Limitations of the ToM hypothesis

Not all children fail these tasks. Autistic children sometimes perform at TD levels

Rely on different strategies

Strange stories task

More natural, complex challenge than false belief tasks

Participants read short story and are asked why a character say something they don’t mean

However maybe too vocabulary loaded

Baron Cohen (1997)

Infer mental states from eyes alone. Designed to address ToM abilities being those of a 6y

Autistic group significantly inspired compared to TD group

However test has been criticised by autistic people

Gernbacher and Yergeau (2019)

Empirical failures of the claim that autistic people lack a theory of mind

Failures of:

• specificity - rely heavily on spoken language

• Universality

• Replicability - no other study has found the same has Baron-Cohen

• Validity - are different ToM tests measure the same thing

Sheppard et al (2016)

Autistic and none filmed during 4 conditions (joke, waiting, telling story, telling compliments)

Non better able to correctly identify condition for non

In separate study, rated just as expressive as non autistic in all conditions except compliments