Abstract
Early psychological theories of autism explained the clinical features of this condition in terms of perceptual and sensory processing impairments. The arrival of domain-specific social cognitive theories changed this focus, postulating a ‘primary’ and specific psychological impairment of social cognition. Across the years, evidence has been growing in support of social cognitive and social attention explanations in autism. However, there has also been evidence for general non-social cognitive impairments in representational understanding, attention allocation and sensory processing. Here, I review recent findings and consider the case for the specificity and primacy of the social cognitive impairment, proposing that we should focus more explicitly on clinically valid features for insights on the integration of ‘social’ and ‘non-social’ cognition.
Highlights
Despite being one of the most heritable of neurodevelopmental conditions, autism spectrum disorder continues to be defined as a behavioural syndrome that is based on clinical information from a child’s developmental history and current behaviour
The claims for a domain-specific cognitive impairment in autism began with evidence from Wimmer and Perner’s false belief task [14] which was considered the ‘litmus test’ of theory of mind in that it aimed to test understanding about another person’s mental representation of a situation independently of the current situation in the real world
Empirical evidence of false belief difficulty in children with autism has driven forward the quest to identify the nature and origins of this key social cognitive impairment
Summary
Despite being one of the most heritable of neurodevelopmental conditions, autism spectrum disorder continues to be defined as a behavioural syndrome that is based on clinical information from a child’s developmental history and current behaviour. Theories of autism have been shaped by the pursuit of two traditional and interrelated goals These are the goals of horizontal and vertical integration [2]. Horizontal integration refers to the way that a disparate set of behaviours or cognitive traits are to be understood relative to one another. Vertical integration refers to the way in which such traits are to be understood in terms of underlying neurobiological systems or processes and has been viewed as a important goal for neurocognitive research [3,4]. Assumptions governing the selection of clinical and cognitive features that are primary and specific to autism have led to the foregrounding of particular behavioural and cognitive symptoms over others, and directed the way that autism has been researched and understood. License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callMore From: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
