Diverting Asperger Deficit Placement of syndrome within the family autism spectrum disorders (ASD) has always been a bit uneasy; although people with do exhibit core impairments in social interaction and communication that are characteristic ASD, they nevertheless perform well on tests thought to assess ability mentalize or possess Theory Mind skills. One classic mentalizing is false-belief task, which subjects must be able represent their own beliefs (true) another's beliefs, false because...

Difficulties in social cognition are well recognized individuals with autism spectrum conditions (henceforth ‘autism’). Here we focus on one crucial aspect of cognition: the ability to empathize feelings another. In contrast theory mind, a capacity that has often been observed be impaired autism, much less is known about for affect sharing. Based previous data suggesting empathy deficits function interoceptive related alexithymia, aimed investigate empathic brain responses autistic and...

A test of advanced theory mind (ToM), first introduced by F. Happé (1994) , was adapted for children (mental, human, animal, and nature stories plus unlinked sentences). These materials were closely matched difficulty presented to forty‐five 7‐ 12‐year‐olds with autism 27 control children. Children who showed ToM impairment on independent tests performed significantly more poorly than controls solely the mental, animal greatest former least latter. Thus, a mentalizing deficit may affect...

Abstract This study attempts to investigate the role of sensorimotor impairments in reading disability that characterizes dyslexia. Twenty‐three children with dyslexia were compared 22 control children, matched for age and non‐verbal intelligence, on tasks assessing literacy as well phonological, visual, auditory motor abilities. The dyslexic group a whole significantly impaired but not sensorimotor, tasks. Analysis individual data suggests most common phonological visual stress vast...

It is now widely accepted that individuals with autism have a Theory of Mind (ToM) or mentalizing deficit. This has traditionally been assessed false-belief tasks and, more recently, silent geometric animations, an on-line ToM task. In adults milder forms standard tests, originally devised for children, often prove insensitive, while the Frith-Happé animations had rather better success at capturing deficit in this population. However, analysis participants' verbal descriptions these which...

Previous behavioral research suggests enhanced local visual processing in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Here we used functional MRI and population receptive field (pRF) analysis to test whether the response selectivity of human cortex is atypical high-functioning ASDs compared neurotypical, demographically matched controls. For each voxel, fitted a pRF model fMRI signals measured while participants viewed flickering bar stimuli traversing field. In most extrastriate...

Abstract The executive function (EF) theory of autism has received much support recently from a growing number studies. However, impairments have not always been easy to identify consistently and so novel “ecologically valid” tests designed which tap into real‐life scenarios that are relevant representative everyday behavior. One characteristic many these tasks is they present the participant with an “ill‐structured” or “open‐ended” situation. Here, we investigated possibility greater...

Abstract Reports of sensory disturbance, such as loudness sensitivity or sound intolerance, are ubiquitous in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) but a mechanistic explanation for these perceptual differences is lacking. Here we tested adaptation to loudness, process that regulates incoming input, adults with ASD and matched controls. Simple (SLA) fundamental adaptive reduces the subjective quiet steady-state sounds environment over time, whereas induced (ILA) means generating reduction perceived...

Does sensorimotor dysfunction underlie reading impairment? To investigate this question, a battery of literacy, phonology, auditory, visual, and motor tests were administered to age- ability-matched groups dyslexic, autistic, control children. As in previous studies, only subset the dyslexic children had sensory and/or impairments, whilst some dyslexics entirely spared, suggesting that impairments are not necessary cause disability. A autistic was also found have impairments; however, these...

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders have highly characteristic impairments in social interaction and this is true also for those high functioning or Asperger syndrome (AS). These cognitive are far from global it seems likely that some of the building blocks cognition intact. In our first experiment, we investigated whether adults who had a diagnosis AS would be similar to control participants terms their eye movements when watching animated triangles short movies normally evoke...

Some autistic children pass classic Theory of Mind (ToM) tasks that others fail, but the significance this finding is at present unclear. We identified two such groups primary school age (labelled ToM+ and ToM-) a matched comparison group typically developing (TD). Five years later we tested these participants again on ToM test battery appropriate for adolescents conducted an fMRI study with story based task. also assessed core symptoms time points. At both times ToM- showed more severe...

Objective: The objective was to map brain activity during early intervals in loss of situation awareness (SA) examine any co-activity visual and high-order regions, reflecting grounds for top-down influences on Level 1 SA. Background: Behavioral neuroscience evidence indicates that areas can engage before perception is complete. Inappropriate messages may distort Evidence perceptual regions would not confirm such influence but reflect a basis it. Method: SA bias were measured using...

The autism spectrum is characterized by genetic and behavioral heterogeneity. However, it still unknown whether there a universal pattern of cognitive impairment in disorder (ASD) multiple impairments are needed to explain the full range symptoms. This study aimed determine three widely acknowledged abnormalities (Theory Mind (ToM) impairment, Executive Function (EF) presence Local Processing Bias (LB)) fractionable autism, relationship between cognition behavior dependent on method...

It has been suggested that mentalizing abilities underlie the distinct profiles of autism characteristics observed in Cornelia de Lange (CdLS) and fragile X syndromes (FXS). However, traditional explicit tasks have high language demands may mask abilities. We compared performance on an implicit anticipatory looking task children with CdLS (N=9), boys FXS autistic (N=22) neurotypical (N=34) children. The groups showed divergent patterns performance. Neurotypical had higher scores than all...

Face perception provides information critical to cognitive computations about the social world. This raises possibility that development of mechanisms used for cognition may depend on presence normal face mechanisms, and this notion partly motivates an aetiological model autism spectrum disorder (ASD) suggests deficits in lead impairments characterize ASD. To investigate these issues, we examined participants with developmental prosopagnosia (DP). A total 2 male DPs severe facial identity...

Abstract The Frith–Happé Animations Test, depicting interactions between triangles, is widely used to measure theory of mind (ToM) ability in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This test began with recording, transcribing, and subjectively scoring participants' verbal descriptions, which consistently found ToM‐specific difficulties ASD. More recently 2011, White et al. created a more objective version this ToM using multiple‐choice questions. However, there has been surprisingly little uptake...