Chapter 9 - Causes 1: Diagnostic Behaviours Flashcards
What theories explain impaired social interaction?
Impaired dyadic (two-way) interaction, impaired triadic (three-way) interaction, impaired theory of mind
Why are many dyadic interactions innate?
They have a role in establishing and maintaining reciprocal bonds between babies and caregivers which is necessary for survival
What are some innate dyadic capacities?
Social orienting (attention to social stimuli), eye salience and gaze following, social learning (ex: learn mother’s voice), imitation, social motivation (intrinsic reward-value of social stimuli), synchronization of vocalizations and movements
What is an explanation for impaired dyadic interactions at the brain base level?
An overgrowth of grey and white matter and failure of synaptic pruning
What is an alternative explanation for impaired dyadic interactions?
That one of the dyadic capacities is ‘primary’ and its impairment affects all the other forms of dyadic interaction. There have been many proposals for the ‘primary’ capacity, but research suggests the most likely one is impaired social motivation (because it is associated with reward)
What is the impaired reward system theory?
Failure to experience reward from social interactions would gradually undermine the innate – and initially intact – tendencies to look at faces, to make eye contact, to respond preferentially to the faces and voices of familiar carers, and to imitate the movements and facial expressions of others. This hypothesis is therefore consistent with the fact that dyadic interaction is unimpaired during the first year of life but then declines
What is the impaired timing theory?
Individuals with autism may have altered perception of time, including difficulties with temporal sequencing, synchronization, and integration of sensory information over time. Timing is an essential component of reciprocal social interaction
What is necessary to facilitate triadic interaction?
The ability to represent in one’s own mind the representation of ‘X’ in another person’s mind & an awareness of sharing the experience of ‘X’
What is the explanation for impaired triadic interaction?
An impairment in the ability to mentalize (the ability to form representations of other people’s and also one’s own mental states)
What are some explanations for impaired theory of mind?
Meta-representation (ability to form a representation of a representation), defective shared attention mechanism and theory of mind mechanism, disruption in intersubjective relatedness, affective agnosia (emotion blindness, no shared pleasure in social interaction)
What is necessary to pass a false belief test, in addition to mentalizing ability?
A certain level of language ability, age-appropriate executive functions, the normal tendency towards seeking central coherence, age-appropriate levels of general intelligence. This means that it is not solely an inability to mentalize that hinders passing the false belief test
What explains impaired emotion processing?
Individuals with ASD struggle to associate the physiological with what stimulated the physiological response (“being tickled made me happy”), have emotional contagion (experience emotions) but don’t have cognitive empathy (know what those emotions are, failure to experience ‘feelings’), have emotional blindness, and have an impaired empathising system/ theory of mind
What explains impaired communication?
Impaired language, comprehension and use of non-verbal signals, comprehension of facial expressions, use of gestures, integration of gesture and speech (timing impairment), pragmatics (ToM)
What are the two explanatory theories for restrictive and repetitive behaviours?
Impaired control of arousal theory & impaired executive function theory, as well as exacerbating factors (anxiety, maladaptive learning, comorbid conditions like Tourette’s)
What is the impaired control of arousal theory?
Levels of physiological arousal are poorly controlled in people with ASD (arousal determines levels of wakefulness and sleep, attention, and alertness). RRBs counteract hyper and hypo-arousal by reducing or increasing sensory stimulation (ex: stimming)
