Social communication difficulties in autism spectrum disorder

Question 1

What is autism?

Answer 1

Neurodevelopmental condition with unknown causes that is behaviourally defined and affects 1 in 100 individuals

Question 2

Autism spectrum

Answer 2

No specific categories to autism, individuals on the autistic spectrum may share certain difficulties in common but can vary hugely

Question 3

Criteria for diagnosis - Impairment in social communication

Answer 3

• Social emotional reciprocity
• Impaired non-verbal communication
• Impairment in developing, maintaining and understanding relationships

Have to show difficulty in all three

Question 4

Criteria for diagnosis - Restricted and repetitive behaviours

Answer 4

• Stereotyped or repetitive movements, use of objects or speech
• Insistence on sameness, inflexible routines, ritualised behaviours
• Intense or unusual interests
• Sensory difficulties (hypersensitivity or hyposensitivity)

Have to show difficulty in two our of four

Question 5

Diagnosis of autism

Answer 5

Clinician makes a decision and can use varied methods to diagnose, some individuals don’t receive diagnosis until adulthood

Question 6

Cognitive theories in autism

Answer 6

Cognitive theories seek to identify atypical thinking styles in autism, informing us about the processes underlying autistic behaviour and helping us to understand why they occur

Question 7

Single deficit account

Answer 7

Psychologists have tried and failed to explain autism in terms of a single underlying cognitive atypicality

Question 8

Theory of mind

Answer 8

Autistic individuals don’t have a theory of mind

Question 9

Autism and Sally-Anne task

Answer 9

80% of children with autism failed the task, compared to 15% of typically developing children

Question 10

Autism and Anticipatory looking

Answer 10

• Neurotypical adults first anticipatory look was to the window associated with the actor’s false belief
• Autistic adults showed no preference for one window over another – this suggest they are not attributing a false belief to the actor
• Suggests an absence of spontaneous theory of mind in individuals with autism

Question 11

Autism and Frith-Happe animations

Answer 11

• The animations allow us to measure theory of mind through coding reactions and language
• Autistic individuals made inappropriate mentalising explanations despite performing as well as control groups on standard theory of mind tests

Question 12

Drawbacks to theory of mind

Answer 12

Not all autistic children fail standard false belief tasks, you can have impaired theory of mind and not have autism

Question 13

Executive function in autism - cognitive flexibility

Answer 13

Autistic children are impaired on the Wisconsin card sorting task as they find it hard to shift to sorting by a new rule

Question 14

Executive function in autism - Working memory

Answer 14

More robust evidence for difficulty with spatial working memory than verbal working memory

• Can do well on digit span tasks but more difficulty with spatial span

Question 15

Executive function in autism - Inhibition on tasks

Answer 15

No impairment on the stroop task but evidence of difficulty on the windows task when inhibiting a prepotent response

Question 16

Drawbacks to executive function theory

Answer 16

Not all autistic children show deficits on executive function tasks, many other clinical groups also show evidence of executive function dysfunction