ASD - Individual Differences Explanation Flashcards
1 What is ToM?
The understanding that other people have thoughts, feelings, knowledge and perspectives that differ from ours.
1 What did Simon Baron-Cohen argue?
What does it present?
ToM is impaired in those with ASD - not fully functioning
Itself as a reduced or delayed ability to recognise and understand the internal mental states of other people
1 What is ‘mindblindness’?
The inability to understand the minds of others
1 What skills does ToM develop from?
Skills which usually appear early in childhood development:
1. follow another persons line of sight
2. engage in pretend play
3. imitate other’s behaviour
1 What is a key skill in ToM development?
Joint attention - when an adult draws a child’s attention to an object using gestures and line of sight.
1 What did Scaife & Bruner (1975) find?
Neurotypical children show joint attention by around 14 months. this skill is often delayed or impaired in children with ASD. This delay causes a ToM deficit which can explain later problems with social communication in later years
1 What is the key deficit in ToM for children with ASD
Ability to distinguish between physical objects and mental objects
1 Supporting research (eyes task) for ToM?
Baron-Cohen (2001) - used ‘eyes task’ to assess ToM deficits.
Ppts with ASD were significantly worse at determining the emotions displayed than controls were
1 Supporting research (Sally Anne task) for ToM?
Baron-Cohen (1985) - only 20% of the ASD correctly answered where Sally would look for her marble compared with 85% of the neurotypical children and 86% of the children with Downs syndrome
1 Methodological issues for ToM?
Sally Anne task - relies on ability to understand language as there is a large amount of the ‘story’ the child must be told. Children with ASD may find this difficult
1 Why is ToM a partial explanation?
Limited explanation for non-social features of ASD.
1 Positive applications of ToM?
Developed strategies and techniques to help children with ASD to ‘mind read’
Joint attention training - adults engage children in tasks (pointing at objects, showing objects & jointly looking at objects)
Such training can have significant benefits on communication and social skills development for children with ASD
2 What is central coherence?
Humans ability to gain overall meaning from a mass of different details
2 Strong central coherence?
Able to identify the most relevant information and form a meaningful understanding of the entire conversation withoit dwelling on details
2 Weak central coherence?
May remember very specific details of the conversation but be unable to summarise the content that was discussed
2 What did Frith refer to?
Central coherence differences in the way we are able to perceive the world as local processing and global processing
2 What is local processing?
Allows us to analyse the fine details and to examine the elements that make up a task or event in fine detail
2 What is global processing?
Allows us to see how the details fit together to form the ‘bigger picture’
2 What did Frith argue that those with ASD have?
Those with ASD have impaired global processing but may have enhanced local processing
2 What did Frith (1989) say people with ASD are less likely to do?
People with ASD are less likely to pay attention to the broader context of a task, conversation, object or event
2 Supporting research (tiles) for weak central coherence?
Shah & Frith (1993) - those with ASD performed better on broken up ‘tiles’ task than those in other two groups suggesting a preference for local processing.
Second experiment - patterns were already broken up so local processing was not needed - did no better than other groups
2 What does weak central coherence consider ASD in?
Considers ASD in positive and optimistic light - doesnt claim that a damaging cognitive deficit is the cause of ASD
Local processing is a bias rather than a deficit - while it may be difficult to overcome, it can be
2 Why is weak central coherence a partial explanation?
Doesnt explain how preference for local processing is created - unclear what parts of the brain might be involved in development of this bias