The I in Autism:severity and social functioning in Autism is related to self-processing

It is well established that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show impaired understanding of others and deficits within social functioning. However, it is still unknown whether self-processing is related to these impairments and to what extent self impacts social functioning and communication. Using an ownership paradigm, we show that children with ASD and chronological- and verbal-age-matched typically developing (TD) children do show the self-referential effect in memory. In addition, the self-bias was dependent on symptom severity and socio-communicative ability. Children with milder ASD symptoms were more likely to have a high self-bias, consistent with a low attention to others relative to self. In contrast, severe ASD symptoms were associated with reduced self-bias, consistent with an ‘absent-self’ hypothesis. These findings indicate that deficits in self-processing may be related to impairments in social cognition for those on the lower end of the autism spectrum

Trajectory recognition as the basis for object individuation: A functional model of object file instantiation and object token encoding

The perception of persisting visual objects is mediated by transient intermediate representations, object files, that are instantiated in response to some, but not all, visual trajectories. The standard object file concept does not, however, provide a mechanism sufficient to account for all experimental data on visual object persistence, object tracking, and the ability to perceive spatially-disconnected stimuli as coherent objects. Based on relevant anatomical, functional, and developmental data, a functional model is developed that bases object individuation on the specific recognition of visual trajectories. This model is shown to account for a wide range of data, and to generate a variety of testable predictions. Individual variations of the model parameters are expected to generate distinct trajectory and object recognition abilities. Over-encoding of trajectory information in stored object tokens in early infancy, in particular, is expected to disrupt the ability to re-identify individuals across perceptual episodes, and lead to developmental outcomes with characteristics of autism spectrum disorders

The eye contact effect: mechanisms and development

The ‘eye contact effect’ is the phenomenon that perceived eye contact with another human face modulates certain aspects of the concurrent and/or immediately following cognitive processing. In addition, functional imaging studies in adults have revealed that eye contact can modulate activity in structures in the social brain network, and developmental studies show evidence for preferential orienting towards, and processing of, faces with direct gaze from early in life. We review different theories of the eye contact effect and advance a ‘fast-track modulator’ model. Specifically, we hypothesize that perceived eye contact is initially detected by a subcortical route, which then modulates the activation of the social brain as it processes the accompanying detailed sensory information

A visual conflict hypothesis for global-local visual deficits in Williams Syndrome: simulations and data

Individuals with Williams Syndrome demonstrate impairments in visuospatial cognition. This has been ascribed to a local processing bias. More specifically, it has been proposed that the deficit arises from a problem in disengaging attention from local features. We present preliminary data from an integrated empirical and computational exploration of this phenomenon. Using a connectionist model, we first clarify and formalize the proposal that visuospatial deficits arise from an inability to locally disengage. We then introduce two empirical studies using Navon-style stimuli. The first explored sensitivity to local vs. global features in a perception task, evaluating the effect of a manipulation that raised the salience of global organization. Thirteen children with WS exhibited the same sensitivity to this manipulation as CA-matched controls, suggesting no local bias in perception. The second study focused on image reproduction and demonstrated that in contrast to controls, the children with WS were distracted in their drawings by having the target in front of them rather than drawing from memory. We discuss the results in terms of an inability to disengage during the planning stage of reproduction due to over-focusing on local elements of the current visual stimulus

Memory and cognition in schizophrenia.

Episodic memory deficits are consistently documented as a core aspect of cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia patients, present from the onset of the illness and strongly associated with functional disability. Over the past decade, research using approaches from experimental cognitive neuroscience revealed disproportionate episodic memory impairments in schizophrenia (Sz) under high cognitive demand relational encoding conditions and relatively unimpaired performance under item-specific encoding conditions. These specific deficits in component processes of episodic memory reflect impaired activation and connectivity within specific elements of frontal-medial temporal lobe circuits, with a central role for the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), relatively intact function of ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and variable results in the hippocampus. We propose that memory deficits can be understood within the broader context of cognitive deficits in Sz, where impaired DLPFC-related cognitive control has a broad impact across multiple cognitive domains. The therapeutic implications of these findings are discussed

The cognitive neuroscience of visual working memory

Visual working memory allows us to temporarily maintain and manipulate visual information in order to solve a task. The study of the brain mechanisms underlying this function began more than half a century ago, with Scoville and Milner’s (1957) seminal discoveries with amnesic patients. This timely collection of papers brings together diverse perspectives on the cognitive neuroscience of visual working memory from multiple fields that have traditionally been fairly disjointed: human neuroimaging, electrophysiological, behavioural and animal lesion studies, investigating both the developing and the adult brain

Reverse production effect: Children recognize novel words better when they are heard rather than produced

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Tania S. Zamuner, Stephanie Strahm, Elizabeth Morin-Lessard, and Michael P. A. Page, 'Reverse production effect: children recognize novel words better when they are heard rather than produced', Developmental Science, which has been published in final form at DOI 10.1111/desc.12636. Under embargo until 15 November 2018. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.This research investigates the effect of production on 4.5- to 6-year-old children’s recognition of newly learned words. In Experiment 1, children were taught four novel words in a produced or heard training condition during a brief training phase. In Experiment 2, children were taught eight novel words, and this time training condition was in a blocked design. Immediately after training, children were tested on their recognition of the trained novel words using a preferential looking paradigm. In both experiments, children recognized novel words that were produced and heard during training, but demonstrated better recognition for items that were heard. These findings are opposite to previous results reported in the literature with adults and children. Our results show that benefits of speech production for word learning are dependent on factors such as task complexity and the developmental stage of the learner.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Investigating the 'latent' deficit hypothesis : age at time of head injury, executive and implicit functions and behavioral insight

This study investigated the 'latent deficit' hypothesis in two groups of frontotemporal headinjured patients, those injured prior to steep morphological and corresponding functional maturational periods for frontotemporal networks (≤ age 25), and those injured >28 years. The latent deficit hypothesis proposes that early injuries produce enduring cognitive deficits manifest later in the lifespan with graver consequences for behavior than adult injuries, particularly after frontal pathology (Eslinger, Grattan, Damasio & Damasio, 1992). Implicit and executive deficits both contribute to behavioral insight after frontotemporal head injury (Barker, Andrade, Romanowski, Morton & Wasti, 2006). On the basis of morphological and behavioral data, we hypothesised that early injury would confer greater vulnerability to impairment on tasks associated with frontotemporal regions than later injury. Patients completed experimental tasks of implicit cognition, executive function measures and the DEX measure of behavioural insight (Behavioral Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome: Wilson, Alderman, Burgess, Emslie, & Evans, 1996). The Early Injury group were more impaired on implicit cognition tasks compared to controls that Late Injury patients. There were no marked group differences on most executive function measures. Executive ability only contributed to behavioral awareness in the Early Injury Group. Findings showed that age at injury moderates the relationship between executive and implicit cognition and behavioral insight and that early injuries result in longstanding deficits to functions associated with frontotemporal regions partially supporting the latent deficit hypothesis

Event-Related Potentials and Emotion Processing in Child Psychopathology

In recent years there has been increasing interest in the neural mechanisms underlying altered emotional processes in children and adolescents with psychopathology. This review provides a brief overview of the most up-to-date findings in the field of Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) to facial and vocal emotional expressions in the most common child psychopathological conditions. In regards to externalising behaviour (i.e. ADHD, CD), ERP studies show enhanced early components to anger, reflecting enhanced sensory processing, followed by reductions in later components to anger, reflecting reduced cognitive-evaluative processing. In regards to internalising behaviour, research supports models of increased processing of threat stimuli especially at later more elaborate and effortful stages. Finally, in autism spectrum disorders abnormalities have been observed at early visual-perceptual stages of processing. An affective neuroscience framework for understanding child psychopathology can be valuable in elucidating underlying mechanisms and inform preventive intervention

The eye gaze direction of an observed person can bias perception, memory, and attention in adolescents with and without autism spectrum disorder

The reported experiments aimed to investigate whether a person and his or her gaze direction presented in the context of a naturalistic scene cause perception, memory, and attention to be biased in typically developing adolescents and high-functioning adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A novel computerized image manipulation program presented a series of photographic scenes, each containing a person. The program enabled participants to laterally maneuver the scenes behind a static window, the borders of which partially occluded the scenes. The gaze direction of the person in the scenes spontaneously cued attention of both groups in the direction of gaze, affecting judgments of preference (Experiment 1a) and causing memory biases (Experiment 1b). Experiment 2 showed that the gaze direction of a person cues visual search accurately to the exact location of gaze in both groups. These findings suggest that biases in preference, memory, and attention are caused by another person's gaze direction when viewed in a complex scene in adolescents with and without ASD (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved