essay plan for autism Flashcards
critically discuss the strengths and weaknesses central coherence/existing theories underlying autism?
paragraph 1:
brief description of the weak central coherence theory and mention of other theories (could do in the intro), suggestion that may be slightly genetic
paragraph 2:
strengths relating specifically to local and global processing abilities
- illusions
- narrative
- visual information
- measure of sentence completion task (limitation that have to be of a certain age to be able to globally process anyway)
- ability to alter deficits through teaching: cues to improve matching of holistic faces
- however, suggestion that savant skills such as drawing may be better, and more positively explained, through the enhanced perceptual functioning theory in that they have increased local processing and good filtering of global processing to aid certain abilities (supported by stronger support for enhanced local over reduced global, Happe & Frith, 2006)
paragraph 3:
limitations that seems relatively untested and indistinguishable from a young age, bearing in mind that autism can be detected in children less than 3 (similar issue with the theory of mind deficit theory mentioned later on)
only explains subset of behaviours relating to global and local processing and their application regarding savant skills, fails to touch on impairment triad (except perhaps that may relate to poorer communication as can’t understand the gist of what someone is saying, as shown through narrative study and may also relate to theory of mind)
paragraph 4:
strengths of the theory of mind deficit theory: - deficit in understanding and manipulating beliefs, as shown by thief study
found to distinguish between those with autism effectively
able to explain the triad of impairments, which the weak central coherence theory fails to do
offers solution through finding that teaching enables successful performance
however, same issue of unable to distinguish until at least age 4 and unable to explain strengths in those with autism, which is where weak central coherence theory comes in
paragraph 1?
central coherence is a cognitive theory, refers to processing information, using higher-level meaning and memory for details to extract the general gist of it
suggested that this global processing of information may be impaired in those with autism, whereas the local processing of details is enhanced (Happe&Frith, 2006)
moderate support across a range of studies investigating local and global processing:
not succumbing to illusions unlike controls, and not aided as much by a 3D ‘disembedded’ condition, showing that attention to detail allowed to see past the illusion which tricks individuals when thinking globally (Happe, 1996).
require more visual information to identify object, as unable to get the gist, using memory and meaning involved in global processing (Booth et al, 2016)
struggled to extract overall meaning of a narrative (Nuske et al, 2009) (may have links to communication impairment in triad and also socialisation if not able to understand gist of what beign said)
support from study findings similar weak central coherence patterns in fathers of boys with autism, suggesting a genetic component (Happe et al, 2001)
indeed this explanation can be used to improve performance in certain studies, such as cueing a feature improves matching of whole faces, aiding holistic processing when it may be deficient (Lopez et al, 2010)
paragraph 3?
limitations:
however, an alternate cognitive theory, termed the enhanced perceptual funtioning theory, has been cited as explaining certain savant skills
this theory agrees that local processing is enhanced however it suggests that global functioning is filtered rather than impaired (Mottron et al, 2001) (even more positive view)
supported through drawing talent could be accounted for by enhanced local processing and filtering of global information (Chamberlain et al, 2006), which supports the finding that an enhancement of local is well supported whereas a deficit in global is less so (Happe et al, 2006)
fails to translate onto Wing & Gould’s 1979 triad of impairment as well as the theory of mind deficit theory involving socialisation, communication and imagination, unlike the next theory to be discussed
paragraph 4?
the previously mentioned limitations of the weak central coherence theory can be explained through another theory, termed the theory of mind deficit theory
this points to deficits in understanding and manipulating beliefs, which was shown in a task whereby autistic children were unable to lie to a ‘thief’ however they understood the task enough to lock the treasure away from the ‘thief’ - so couldn’t verbalise or understand beliefs but could act on them (Sodian & Frith, 1992)
indeed the use of various false belief tasks has been able to successfully distinguish between those with autism, such as 80% of 4 year olds passing compared to 20% of 12 year olds with autism (Baron-Cohen et al, 1985)
also, found that could apply false belief, shown through success in the task, when taught and understoof what a false belief was, supporting the idea of failure to understand beliefs, but can be taught, which is a strength of this explanation (Ghim et al, 2001).
this explanation is able to account for the traid of impairment, unlike the WCC theory: social withdrawal linked to not understanding behaviour of others, communication through inability to understand that others have separate mental states and imagination: pretend play may require same representation needed to attribute beliefs to others (Jarrold et al, 2000)
links in to being able to explain early distinguishing behavioural factors in those with autism which the weak central coherence theory cannot:
at 18 months, lack of pretend play (as explained above) put child at increased risk of diagnosis (Baron-Cohen et al, 1996) and fewer gestures at 1 years old, linked to reduced communication (mentioned above) (Osterling et al, 2002)
however, unable to account for strengths in those with autism, which is where the weak central coherence theory comes in
