Main WCC

• • ToM idea for autism has some criticisms. To tackle those, Frith (1989) came up with a different theory that could explain two different research findings

  1. People with ASD did well on tasks that regular people found hard
  2. ToM couldn't explain the non-social parts of ASD
• What is the Weak Central Coherence theory?

  • Refers to how people process and integrate information to form a big-picture understanding of the world
• Global vs Local processing:

  • Local = focus on the small details to solve problems
  • Global = see how these details fit together to understand the bigger picture
  • Frith (1989) - central coherence is our ability to pull all the fine details together into a meaningful whole
  • For example, Suhen having a conversation, someone with strong central coherence can pick out the most important stuff and understand the overall meaning. So when recalling a convo from a couple days ago you might recall the main idea but struggle to remember little details
• WCC + ASD:

  • Central coherence is lacking (weak) in ASD
  • People with ASD are less likely to pay attention to the broader context of a task, convo, object or event + tend to focus on isolated details instead
  • This local processing is a deficit when the task requires an understanding of the 'big picture' of connections between the elements of a problem
  • Many people with ASD excel at tasks which involve picking out details such as a city map with every house shown
  • Therefore, WCC involves impaired global processing but enhances local processing
• Central Coherence as a continuum

  • Happe and Frith (2006) talk about central coherence as a cognitive style, which means some people prefer one way of processing things over another (focusing on details or seeing the big picture). It exists on a scale from really weak to really strong
  • People with ASD have extremely weak central coherence