Abstract
As recent developments in autism research offer alternative explanations to the mainstream options, it can now be argued that the so-called cognitive deficits in the social domain associated with autism have been mischaracterized or, at least, oversimplified. We will use predictive models within a 4E (i.e., embodied, embedded, enactive and extended) conception of cognition to address the question of cognitive impairment in psychiatrics and autism. Such models force us to reassess what “cognitive deficit” means by integrating the environment not only in its usual sense (evo-developmental), but by understanding all cognitive performances as embedded in environments (or fields of affordances) that shape and sustain them. By adopting a predictive 4E perspective, we aim to show that the “cognitive deficits” associated with autism are in fact mismatches between environmental resources and the particular form of neurological functioning of autistic people (neurodiversity), brought about by the fact that the cultural niches that set up the relevant fields of affordances are structured by and for neurotypicals. This mismatch leads to epistemic injustices, both testimonial and hermeneutic, that feed back into research on autism and clinical approaches, thereby making the “deficits” appear based on individual shortcomings. In this context, autism interventions should partly focus on the development of social policies aimed at modifying those aspects of cultural niches that make environments unsuitable for the full development of all individuals.
Highlights
There is an ongoing transition in cognitive science from internalist to externalist, or so-called 4E, models of human cognition [1]
By adopting a predictive 4E perspective, we aim to show that the “cognitive deficits” associated with autism are mismatches between environmental resources and the particular form of neurological functioning of autistic people, brought about by the fact that the cultural niches that set up the relevant fields of affordances are structured by and for neurotypicals
We question the dominant conception of cognitive deficits to propose an alternative view, the latter being the main development we propose here, and we use the case of autism to illustrate this alternative and discuss some of the issues that emerge from the proposed shift
Summary
There is an ongoing transition in cognitive science from internalist to externalist, or so-called 4E, models of human cognition [1]. Recent developments in autism research offer alternative explanations [4] [5] [6] to the mainstream options [7] [8] [9] With these models, and our externalist concept of deficits, we believe it can be argued that the so-called “social deficits” associated with autism have been mischaracterized [10] [11] or, at least, grossly oversimplified. We adopt a recently developed family of predictive explanations of autism, and analyze the so-called social deficit as a mismatch between autistic cognitive processing, as understood by such models, and the autistic individual’s environment, built by and for neurotypicals We end this analysis by showing how the resulting testimonial and hermeneutic injustices [12] feed back into research on autism as well as clinical practice with autistic individuals to entrench the externally construed deficit into the autistic individual’s cognitive system
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