COMPARE COGNITIVE THEORIES OF AUTISM

Compare Cognitive theories of autism

Compare Cognitive theories of autism

This paper describes and compares the typical impairments of autism and three cognitive theories that aim to explain these impairments. The term theory of mind (ToM) describes children's understanding of mental states like thoughts? intentions and beliefs and their influences on human behavior. Typically developing children acquire ToM rapidly during the preschool period? as evidenced by their success on inferential false belief tests requiring predictions about the thoughts? speech or behavior of naïve individuals with ideas that conflict both with reality and with the child's own knowledge (Wellman? Cross? & Watson? 2001)).

The contrast between 3-year-olds' widespread failure and 5-year-olds' widespread success is so sharp as to suggest that “understanding of belief? and relatedly? understanding of mind? exhibit genuine conceptual change in the preschool period” (Wellman et al.? 2001? p. 655). But there are exceptions. Severe delays? specific to ToM? often persist in certain groups of children with disabilities? including those with autism . Baron-Cohen? Wheelwright? Hill? et al. (2001) tested groups of literate adults including neurotypical university students and general population controls plus a sample of very-high-functioning adults with Asperger's disorder on the adult version of the test. Glossary definitions of all the response words were supplied to partially overcome the problem of participants' lack of familiarity with many of these. Even so? the test proved highly challenging? even for the adults without disabilities. For example? only 7 of the 36 items (19%) yielded pass rates of 80% or better from the 122 community controls.

Nonetheless? the group of 15 adults with ASD scored significantly lower? with only two items (5%) having 80% pass rates and seven items (19%) being failed by a majority of the sample. This? together with the negative correlation between test scores and severity of the ASD group's autistic symptoms? prompted the conclusion that the test is “a sensitive measure of adult social intelligence…with which to identify subtle impairment in social intelligence in otherwise normally intelligent adults” (Baron-Cohen? Wheelwright? Hill? et al.? 2001? p. 246).

For pre-adolescents aged 10 and over? Baron-Cohen? Wheelwright? Scahill? et al. (2001) reported a 28-item children's version of the eye-reading test (see Baron-Cohen? 2007? for an unpublished electronic version). This test uses the same pictures as the adult test. No information on the test's psychometric properties (e.g.? test-retest reliability? internal consistency) was been reported either in this original study or in any known subsequent publications (e.g.? Sharp? 2008) using the test. Nor were Baron-Cohen? Wheelwright? Scahill? et al. (2001) able to directly verify that the test taps ToM? since their sample of 10-13-year-olds with Asperger disorder were at too advanced an age and IQ level (mean = 115) to be likely to have failed false belief tests? had any been administered. Nevertheless? the facts that (a) the Asperger group scored significantly lower than an age- and IQ-matched group of typical developers and (b) there was a significant negative correlation between eye-reading and “folk physics” test scores for the ASD group ...