The 'mechanism' of human cognitive variation

The theory of psychosis and autism as diametrical disorders offers a tractable and testable view of normal and abnormal human cognitive variation as a function of opposing traits grouped by their selection for maternal and paternal reproductive fitness. The theory could be usefully rooted and developed with reference to the lower-level perceptual and attentional phenomena from which social cognitive modules are developmentally refined

The autism spectrum as a source of cognitive and cultural diversity

Individual differences in perception and in social cognition are products of both biology and cultural experience. Many of the same differences that typify autism when they occur in extremes also underlie normal human cognitive variation when they occur to more subtle degrees. In particular, autism spectrum conditions are characterised by low degrees of two linked capacities: level of construal, meaning the tendency to represent percepts as individual details rather than as whole contexts; and psychological distance, meaning the tendencies to perceive objects and events in distant rather than peri-personal space, to recall or to anticipate past or future time rather than the here-and-now, to approach social interactions in the allocentric frame of other people rather than one's own egocentric frame, and to represent hypothetical, counterfactual, or fictional beliefs that are at odds with actual facts. Significantly, culture also exerts linked effects on level of construal and psychological distance, which are relatively increased in more contextual, socially focussed cultures and decreased in more individualistic, self-focussed cultures

Digital equalization of time-delay array receivers on coherent laser communications

© [2017 Optical Society of America.]. One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic reproduction and distribution, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modifications of the content of this paper are prohibited.Field conjugation arrays use adaptive combining techniques on multi-aperture receivers to improve the performance of coherent laser communication links by mitigating the consequences of atmospheric turbulence on the down-converted coherent power. However, this motivates the use of complex receivers as optical signals collected by different apertures need to be adaptively processed, co-phased, and scaled before they are combined. Here, we show that multiple apertures, coupled with optical delay lines, combine retarded versions of a signal at a single coherent receiver, which uses digital equalization to obtain diversity gain against atmospheric fading. We found in our analysis that, instead of field conjugation arrays, digital equalization of time-delay multi-aperture receivers is a simpler and more versatile approach to accomplish reduction of atmospheric fading.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Oral motor deficits in speech-impaired children with autism

Absence of communicative speech in autism has been presumed to reflect a fundamental deficit in the use of language, but at least in a subpopulation may instead stem from motor and oral motor issues. Clinical reports of disparity between receptive vs. expressive speech/language abilities reinforce this hypothesis. Our early-intervention clinic develops skills prerequisite to learning and communication, including sitting, attending, and pointing or reference, in children below 6 years of age. In a cohort of 31 children, gross and fine motor skills and activities of daily living as well as receptive and expressive speech were assessed at intake and after 6 and 10 months of intervention. Oral motor skills were evaluated separately within the first 5 months of the child's enrolment in the intervention programme and again at 10 months of intervention. Assessment used a clinician-rated structured report, normed against samples of 360 (for motor and speech skills) and 90 (for oral motor skills) typically developing children matched for age, cultural environment and socio-economic status

Combining computer game-based behavioural experiments with high-density EEG and infrared gaze tracking

Rigorous, quantitative examination of therapeutic techniques anecdotally reported to have been successful in people with autism who lack communicative speech will help guide basic science toward a more complete characterisation of the cognitive profile in this underserved subpopulation, and show the extent to which theories and results developed with the high-functioning subpopulation may apply. This study examines a novel therapy, the "Rapid Prompting Method" (RPM). RPM is a parent-developed communicative and educational therapy for persons with autism who do not speak or who have difficulty using speech communicatively.The technique aims to develop a means of interactive learning by pointing amongst multiple-choice options presented at different locations in space, with the aid of sensory "prompts" which evoke a response without cueing any specific response option. The prompts are meant to draw and to maintain attention to the communicative task–making the communicative and educational content coincident with the most physically salient, attention-capturing stimulus – and to extinguish the sensory–motor preoccupations with which the prompts compete.ideo-recorded RPM sessions with nine autistic children ages 8–14years who lacked functional communicative speech were coded for behaviours of interest