Weak Central Coherence

Question 1

Early evidence

Answer 1

verbal memory shows little benefit from meaning (Hermelin and O’Connor, 1967) exact rather than correct repetition (Aurnhammer & Frith, 1969) and superior performance on dis-embedding tasks (Shah & frith 1983).

Question 2

Scott, Brosnan and Wheelwright, 2006

Answer 2

Some findings that appear relatively consistent such as Block Design & Embedded figures test have reported moxed and inconsistent findings which could be linked to the wording of the question e.g. are the 2 lines the same length vs do the 2 lines look the same.

Question 3

Happe, Briskman and Frith, 2001

Answer 3

Extending the idea that WC is found in the BAP by discovering 1/2 of father and 1/3 of mothers show superior performance on EFT and block segmentation

Question 4

Happe and Frithe 2006

Answer 4

evidence from Teunisse et al 2001 shows how EF and CC performance was unrelated and did not correlate with symptom severity, whilst Pellicano et al found a significant relationship between EF and WCC on some but not all tasks assessing coherence in 3-4 year olds, but choice of task is likely to have confounded the results. Booth et al 2003 directly examined the role of planning and CC on a global/local drawing task comparing ADHD, ASD and controls. Found that piecemeal drawing was only evident in ASD group, concluding EF performance and CC in not common in all groups & poor-planning cannot explain detail focus in Autism.