Weak Central Coherence 5

• What is central coherence?

  Ability to derive overall meaning from a mass of details (global meaning).
• What is weak central coherence?

  Autistic people have a cognitive preference for local over global processing.
• Frith 1989

  States WCC refers to our ability to integrate fine details into an overall pattern, to understand how elements come together in a meaningful way.
• Shah & Frith 1993

  Tested WCC with:

  20 young people with ASD

  13 young people with learning difficulties

  17 typically developing young people

  16 typically developing children

  All shown a 2 dimensional pattern on a card.

  Had to construct the same pattern using smaller individual blocks.

  40 designs in total.

  People with ASD performed better.
• Strengths of WCC

  Supporting evidence

  Reductionist

  Shows benefits / positives of ASD

  Explains more characteristics than ToM
• Weaknesses of WCC

  Origin of preference for local processing unknown

  Reductionist