Autism

•	Leo Kanner (1943), Hans Asperger (1944) coined term
•	basic disturbance in schizophrenia: Ernst Bleur (1911) --> narrowing of relationships & social life
Characterised by:
(a)  qualitative impairment in social interaction
(b)          "                    "           "     communication
(c)          "                    "           "     pretend play
•	75%  below normal IQ
•	50%  no language
•	2-4 per 10,000   or   20 per 10,000
Also Characterised by a TOM Impairment
•	false belief
•	knowledge

Why Autistic?
(1)  Executive Control
•	1996 review: people with autism did worse on 25 of 32 EF tasks, and never better

 Russell et al., 1991, 1996:
•	3-year-olds & autistics understand false belief but physical reality (marble in box) more salient
•	must suppress knowledge of physical reality
•	development = more executive control
•	Windows Task  child can see which window object in, other can’t, child must point to empty box for other to search in  must inhibit what they know to be true
•	20 trials, still failing, didn’t learn to deceive

Problem 1:  not replicated  Samuels & Frye (1996) found 3-year-olds easily pass task
Problem 2:  photograph task
Problem 3:  general deficits regarding mental understanding
e.g., “What is the brain for?”
•	normal 3-year-olds: majority say “thinking”
•	mentally handicapped 5-yr-olds: 84% - thinking, etc.
•	autistics: 24% - thinking, etc., 71% - behaviour (e.g., move)
Problem 4: Griffiths et al. (1999):
•	Do EF deficits cause theory of mind type deficits? Not possible to tell with previous studies because these were done with older children, adolescents and adults who also have theory of mind deficits. If EF deficits are causal they should be present early in life and precede social deficits.
•	children with autism 4.3 years, & group of developmentally delayed children of same age and IQ
•	gave them 8 executive function tasks: e.g., invisible displacement, boxes tasks (hide an object in each of six different boxes, child must search for an object, boxes either scrambled or not scrambled, child must then search again for second object)  child must keep over a delay where previously searched in mind, and inhibit search to locations where has already retrieved object  monkeys with dorsolateral prefrontal cortex lesions make errors  autistics no worse than controls on these tasks but autistics had social deficits (joint attention (sharing attention with another person regarding an object) and social interaction (e.g., turn-taking, extent to which interacted with another person)

(2)  General Deficit in Social Knowledge (Baron-Cohen, Frith & Leslie, 1985; Happé, 1994)
•	children with autism tend to badly on ToM measures (e.g., false belief)
Verbal Measures versus Non-Verbal Measures:
•	on many studies, children with autism are unimpaired on verbal measures relative to control children (e.g., children with Downs syndrome, children with MLD)
•	on many non-verbal measures, however, they still show impairments
•	Example: low IQ children look don’t do either
•	Children with autism tend not to look to others’ faces to share attention, follow gaze, or engage in proto-declarative pointing
•	Children with autism look less at people, look more at objects, and don’t shift gaze between objects and people as much as control children  lack of social referencing?
Bowler (1992); Bruner & Feldman (1991); Happé (1995)
•	success on ToM tasks by children with autism tends to be largely verbally mediated, unusually conscious and logical, like some kind of “mental arithmetic”
Ruffman, Garnham & Rideout (in press)
•	normal pattern: develop implicit insights through spontaneous processes of induction, through what taught  later make these insights explicit as language develops  language allows one to formulate, refine, and reflect on theories
•	autistic pattern: don’t have or develop spontaneous insights, must rely on explicit, language-based theoretical processes
•	autistics possess explicit verbal theoretical knowledge which they learn through self-motivated induction, or through being taught by others
•	they lack implicit, spontaneous insights
•	verbal-non-verbal pattern above would make sense if verbal measures pick up explicit knowledge and non-verbal measures pick up mainly implicit knowledge

•	Children given social and control tasks

Example of Social Task: 2 social tasks each with two conditions
•	story character likes one thing (e.g., apple), but not another (e.g., orange)
•	places apple in one container and orange in other
•	Eye gaze prompt (narrator on audiotape): “He wants to get something to eat. I wonder which slide Charlie will come down.”
•	Verbal question (from experimenter): “Which slide will Charlie come down?”
•	two conditions: desirable object once in left-hand container, once in right-hand container

Control Task: two conditions
•	bag with 10 green objects, 0 red
•	green ones come down green slide, and red ones down red slide
•	object secretly chosen and placed on slide
•	Eye gaze prompt (narrator): “I will put the shape down the slide now. I wonder which slide the shape will come down.”
•	Verbal question (from experimenter): “Which slide will the shape come down?”
•	places apple in one container and orange in other
•	two conditions: 10 green, 0 red; 0 green, 10 red

Percentage Correct on the Social and Control Tasks

	Children With Autism	MLD Children	
	Verbal Question
	Eye Gaze	Verbal Question	Eye Gaze	
Social Mean	75*	53.5	73.5*	70.5*	
Control Mean	100*	71.5*	100*	74.0*	

Mean performance tested against chance: *p < .001.

•	Main deficit for children with autism is eye gaze (implicit) not verbal
•	Correlation between extent of autism and (a) social eye gaze: r = .55, p < .01, (b) social verbal performance: r = .26, n.s., and (c) control eye gaze: r = .08, n.s.
•	Not a general deficit in eye gaze because eye gaze on control task is equivalent to MLD children