Autism

• what is the definition of autism?

  Neurodevelopmental condition with atypical brain functioning emerging in early childhood
• how is it defined by the DSM-5 and ICD-11?

  behaviourally with no known causes
• what how individuals does autism affect?

  1 in 100
• what gender has a higher prevalance?

  boys (3:1)
• what difficulties with social communication do autistic people have?

  social-emotional reciprocacy

  non-verbal communication

  social cues

  understanding and maintaining relationships
• what are RRBs?

  restricted and repetitive behaviours
• what are RRBS?

  stereotyped movements

  repetitive use of objects

  insistence on sameness

  inflexible routines

  intense or unusal interests

  sensory difficulties
• what sensory diffculties do autistic people have?

  hypersensitivity = to things in environment

  hyposensitvity = not noticing things others do

  sensory seeking = have a fascination to something
• what is diagnosis based on?

  clinician assessment of behavioural criteria
• what tools are used for diagnosis?

  autism diagnostic observation schedule

  autism diagnistic interview
• Do autistic people have theory if mind?

  often struggle with undertsanding others' mental states, referred to as 'mind blindness'
• what task is typically used to measure false-belief?

  sally-anne task
• what % of autistic children fail the sally anne taks accordning to Baron-Cohen?


  80
• what did Senju et al use to assess theory of mind in people with aspergers syndrome?

  anticipatory looking paradigm
• what task did Abell et al use?

  Frith-happe animations to show interpretations of shapes movements
• what are the limitations with these taks to measure theory of mind in autistic individuals?

  tasks dont reflect real life

  doesn't explain all autism symptoms

  theoyr of mind difficulties are not unique to autism e.g deaf individuals also experience these difficulties
• what is executive functioning?

  Cognitive processes.
• how do autistic people struggle with EF?

  struggle with tasks requiring planning e.g. tower of london task which requires them to plan several moves ahead

  
  

  struggle with cognitive flexibility e.g Wisconsin card sorting task e.g they struggle to adapt to new rules
• what specific EF difficulties do auistic people have?

  difficulties with spatial working memory
• what are the results on cognitive inhibition?

  mixed results
• what was found in a study on ADHD individuals on the stroop task?

  thye performed similarly to controls suggetsing no difficulties
• cogntitve atypicallity should be:

  universal

  unique

  explanatory power
• what is the enhanced perceptual functioning hypothesis?


  perceptual processing is superior in autistic people, as they are overly sensitive and thus are better at perceieving environment. This superiorty is hard to control and disrupts the dvelopment of other behaviours and abilities.
• what have ptich discrimination studies found?

  superior perfromance in autistic adolecents.
• what is the critics of Bonnel et al's pitch discrimination study?

  small study

  neglects other aspects of sound
• what did Jones et al study?

  auditory discrimination
• what did Jones et al find? and what were thye characterised by?

  1 in 5 autistic adolecents had enhanced frequency discrimination

  characterised by average intellectually ctual ability and delayed language
• what do Jones et al's findings suggest?

  suggets a possible supgroups of autistic people whose langauge development has been impaired due to over focus on perceptual cues
• what is central coherence?

  tendency to process stimuli as a whole
• what is weak central coherence?

  a bias for processing the parts of any stimulus at the expense of the whole
• how do autistic people perfrom on the embedded figure test?

  thye perfrom better and quicker as thye are less distrcated by the whole image
• what are the results of the planning/drawing test?

  austic children draw in an atypical, fragmented way and focus of the details
• is WCC theory universal?


  no not all autistc people show evidence of WCC
• is WCC theory unique?

  no there is evidence for people with anorexia and williams syndrome also show WCC
• does WCC have explanatory power?

  does not explain all symptoms

  may explain interference with social intercation and may explain some RRBs
• What is the atypical social orienting hypothesis?

  autistic indivduals show reduced social orienting to social information particularly the face and eyes. this leads to reduced ability to perceive face identity and emotional expression
• what was Kliemann et al's study on atypical looking at the eyes?

  autistic and non-autistic adolecents watched a film and their eyes were tracked. autistics groups showed more shifts away from the eyes suggetsing an active avoidance
• what was Rutherford and Towns study on atypical looking at the eyes?


  looked at facial expression and asked to make judgements. autusic adults howed no differences in amount of looking at eyes and mouth.
• what is critical aanlysis of Rutherford and towns study?

  they had specific instructions to look at the eyes and mouth
• is atypicla social orienting universal?

  no there are many stydies thta do not show impaired looking to the face or eyes