Neurodivergence in Development and Autism Flashcards
What are developmental conditions/differences?
- Condition manifesting before adulthood that alters typical development
- ex. motor, cognitive, socio-emotional
- One (specific) or more (pervasive) of these areas affected
- Can manifest in delay or deficit or difference
What are the causes of developmental conditions?
- Chromosomal abnormalities (Genetic mutation; ex. Down syndrome where you have an extra copy of chromosome 21)
- Prenatal factors (Damage while in womb such as oxygen deprivation, maternal infection, structural differences in brain; ex. Cerebral Palsy)
- Unknown combination (Genetic, environmental, psychological, neurological)
What are the descriptions and diagnosis of autism?
- Different characteristics and combinations of criteria, varying severity
- May show “islets of ability”: equivalent to, or better than, neurotypical people (e.g. rote memory, spatial tasks)
- 4x more common in males than females
What are the possible causes of autism?
- Hereditary component as there are some evidence from twin and family studies
- Structural differences in the brain, with possibly connection differences in neural networks
- BUT to date, there is no clear genetic/neurological explanation
What are the problems with diagnosis for autism?
- Diagnosed and defined using behavioural criteria, wherein some signs can appear early (12-18 months) but typically the signs around 3+ years can go undiagnosed
*12-18 months bcs that’s when language usually starts forming - Increase recently in numbers, largely due to better diagnostic material and understanding of impairments
- Developmental outcomes are highly variable
Explain Executive Functioning (EF) as one of the traditional theories of autism
- EF used as an umbrella term
- ex. planning, organising, inhibition, impulse control, sustaining attention
- Early difficulties in EF might play role in developmental outcomes
- Correlation between EF and ToM
Explain Weak Central Coherence as one of the traditional theories of autism
- Central coherence = TD people have tendency to process incoming info globally
- WCC = bias for featural or local information, details
- Proposed to explain certain aspects of autism, like islets of ability and preoccupation with parts of objects
- Possibly a superiority in detail than a deficit in global
How might a ToM deficit lead 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
Explain Baron-Cohen’s (1985) false-belief task: Sally-Anne task
Sally-Anne false-belief task
- If you have ToM, you know that when she comes back , Sally will look for the marble where she left it. Not where it now actually is
- Also tested on Down syndrome children because they wanted to see whether it is specific to autism, instead of something common to neurodivergent groups
- 80% of TD and DS solved the task; only 20% of autistic group was able to solve it
What are the limitations of the ToM hypothesis?
- Not all children fail these tasks
*20% of the false-belief test-takers with autism could still solve the Sally-Anne task - Autistic children may not solve these tasks until much older than TD children, but maybe this is because they rely on different strategies on simpler tasks
Explain the Strange Stories task
- Read a short story
- Asked why a character says something
- ex. scenarios with white lies
Criticism:
- Even those who passed the 2nd order ToM tasks were impaired which questions the findings of this task
- Could be too vocabulary-loaded
How did Baron-Cohen et al test on ToM through ‘reading through the eyes’?
- Infer mental states from eyes alone, as a way to address ToM abilities beyond those of a 6yo
- Choose between correct emotion and “foil”
- Autistic group significantly impaired compared to TD group and Tourette Syndrome group
- Test heavily criticised. particularly by autistic people because is it really measuring ToM?
What are the empirical failures of the claim that people with autism lack ToM? (based on Gernsbacher & Yergeau, 2019)
- Failures of specificity
- Failures of universality
- Failures of replicability
- Failures of validity
What is the triad of impairments for autism according to Wing & Gould (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 or compulsive behaviours
What are the 3 “traditional” theories of autism?
- Executive Functioning
- Weak Central Coherence
- Theory of Mind Deficit
*Heavily criticised and frowned upon. The offensive, ignorant, flawed, easily debunked with modern context, and outdated nature of these literatures have to be kept in mind.
