Weak Central Coherence Research Articles

Acquired Savantism: The Genesis of Accidental Genius

A cquired S avantism : T he G enesis of A ccidental G enius Kapil Gururangan B S J At age ten, Orlando Serrell was struck on the left side of his head with a baseball; he is able to clearly remember the weather and details about his personal activities for every day since that accident (Hughes 2010, 149). Some elderly patients battling the debilitation of dementia have discovered newfound abilities in music, art, and language (Miller 2008, 8). A former molecular biologist loses her ability to speak but becomes amazingly talented in painting that fuses music, vision, and feeling onto a canvas titled Unraveling Bolero (8). These examples all have one thing in common: the individuals acquire impressive abilities following damage to the central nervous system, predominantly in the left hemisphere of the brain. Savant syndrome is the presence of extreme talent in the wake of profound disabilities and while this normally presents in early development, scientists have observed a fascinating mechanism for the occurrence of savant syndrome after an accident (Hughes 2010, 149). This latter condition has come to the attention of researchers as acquired savant syndrome, the development of savant-like abilities following traumatic injury to the central nervous system. These prodigious abilities were once thought to be purely congenital, but case studies of patients with brain damage have uncovered the possibility that these abilities may not be uniquely inherent to savants, but are also latent in unimpaired people as well. The research of acquired savant syndrome creates the possibility for greater insights into how the human mind functions and develops, as well as how talent and genius can manifest by pure accident. Advances in this field have begun to create new opportunities in science that could expand the potential of the human mind and may one day change the way the world perceives disability and talent. N euroscience of D imensia and T alent The majority of recognized savants are products of genetic mutation or disabilities in early development; their talent is therefore natural to them and it is difficult to determine exactly what factors may have combined to produce such astounding ability. Researchers have several theories about the underlying mechanism of savant syndrome after observing the neural activity of savants, both congenital and acquired. The autistic model for savantism stems from the high incidence of autism in the savant population. Nearly half of all savants display some condition that can be classified as an autism spectrum disorder, leading scientists to presume that some facet of autism may also predispose the human mind to the formation of these amazing abilities (Treffert 2009, 2). This model is based on the principle of weak central coherence theory, Figure 1. “Unraveling Bolero” - Former molecular biologist Anne Adams produced this piece after losing her ablility to speak. which postulates that the development of talents with extreme obsession is due to an autistic mind’s focus on local rather than global processing (Hughes 2010, 149; Wallace 2008, 233). Central coherence is the “driving force to bring together vast amounts of information” to acquire a global understanding of various sources of information (Wallace 2008, 233). Recall John Godfrey Saxe’s 19th century poem “The Blind Men and the Elephant,” where 1 • B erkeley S cientific J ournal • A ccidents • V olume 14 • I ssue 2

Visual local and global processing in low‐functioning deaf individuals with and without autism spectrum disorder

The ComFor study has indicated that individuals with intellectual disability (ID) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show enhanced visual local processing compared with individuals with ID only. Items of the ComFor with meaningless materials provided the best discrimination between the two samples. These results can be explained by the weak central coherence account. The main focus of the present study is to examine whether enhanced visual perception is also present in low-functioning deaf individuals with and without ASD compared with individuals with ID, and to evaluate the underlying cognitive style in deaf and hearing individuals with ASD. Different sorting tasks (selected from the ComFor) were administered from four subsamples: (1) individuals with ID (n = 68); (2) individuals with ID and ASD (n = 72); (3) individuals with ID and deafness (n = 22); and (4) individuals with ID, ASD and deafness (n = 15). Differences in performance on sorting tasks with meaningful and meaningless materials between the four subgroups were analysed. Age and level of functioning were taken into account. Analyses of covariance revealed that results of deaf individuals with ID and ASD are in line with the results of hearing individuals with ID and ASD. Both groups showed enhanced visual perception, especially on meaningless sorting tasks, when compared with hearing individuals with ID, but not compared with deaf individuals with ID. In ASD either with or without deafness, enhanced visual perception for meaningless information can be understood within the framework of the central coherence theory, whereas in deafness, enhancement in visual perception might be due to a more generally enhanced visual perception as a result of auditory deprivation.

Thinking in Pictures as a Cognitive Account of Autism

We analyze the hypothesis that some individuals on the autism spectrum may use visual mental representations and processes to perform certain tasks that typically developing individuals perform verbally. We present a framework for interpreting empirical evidence related to this "Thinking in Pictures" hypothesis and then provide comprehensive reviews of data from several different cognitive tasks, including the n-back task, serial recall, dual task studies, Raven's Progressive Matrices, semantic processing, false belief tasks, visual search, spatial recall, and visual recall. We also discuss the relationships between the Thinking in Pictures hypothesis and other cognitive theories of autism including Mindblindness, Executive Dysfunction, Weak Central Coherence, and Enhanced Perceptual Functioning.

Apport des approches inspirées de la neuropsychologie au diagnostic d’autisme chez l’adulte : une étude de cas

Given that autism spectrum disorders are highly heterogeneous in their clinical presentation, diagnostic assessment in adults, whose symptoms may be complicated by the presence of various comorbidities and developmental trajectories, is not easily practiced in a clinical psychiatric setting. The present study aims at describing diagnostic assessments inspired by current research on cognition in autism. Core cognitive traits, such as theory of mind, executive function and weak central coherence, thought to be endophenotypic traits, are analyzed. Moreover, the utility of screening scales, constructed on the basis of these cognitive traits, is discussed. We describe the case of a 29-year-old French man, referred by his occupational physician, due to the onset of anxiety attacks in his workplace. During the first outpatient psychiatric assessment, he seemed inhibited, and revealed that social situations fueled his anxiety attacks. He was therefore diagnosed with personality avoidance disorder, depression and social anxiety. Although depression and anxiety decreased after Buspirone and Milnacipran were prescribed, some clinical symptoms, such as lack of interest in social situations, ritualized behavior, narrow specific interests (i.e., astronomy, history), and a very good memory for factual information, remained. According to the patient, these symptoms appeared during his infancy. These symptoms, consistent with Asperger Syndrome diagnosis, led to the administration of two screening scales: the Autism Quotient (AQ) and the Empathy Quotient (EQ). The results obtained in these scales were consistent with Asperger Syndrome diagnosis. They indicated the presence of qualitative difficulties in social interactions, a lack of spontaneous empathy and attention switching, among other behaviors. À comprehensive diagnostic assessment was then proposed. The Diagnostic Interview for Social and Communication disorders (DISCO), a semi-structured interview with parents, was used in order to gather developmental and behavioral information. A neuropsychological assessment was conducted with the patient. Both assessments revealed developmental and neurocognitive particularities consistent with Asperger Syndrome diagnosis. Among these cognitive traits, (i) episodic memory peculiarities, such as idiosyncratic encoding and retrieval strategies and impaired encoding of complex visual stimuli (ii) absence of significant difference between the verbal and the performance scales of the WAIS III, but significant differences among subtests, (iii) executive dysfunction found in flexibility and generativity tasks, (iv) perceptive focalization on details, and most importantly (v) significant impairment on theory of mind tasks are worth noting In conclusion, numerous adults with Asperger Syndrome were not diagnosed during childhood. This is probably due to the relatively recent changes in nosography, and their cognitive development, which is not characterized by language delay, in opposition to high functioning autism. Therefore, screening for autism spectrum disorders in a clinical psychiatric setting is important. Screening can lead to a more comprehensive assessment pinpointing developmental history, cognitive profile, and comorbidities, given that these three factors are indispensable for an effective therapeutic follow-up.

Ambiguity detection in adolescents with Asperger syndrome: Is central coherence or theory of mind impaired?

The aim of this study was to investigate the role of central coherence skills and theory of mind competences in ambiguity detection in adolescents with Asperger syndrome (AS). We sought to pinpoint the level at which AS individuals experience difficulty detecting semantic ambiguity and identify the factors that account for their problems. We hypothesized that this difficulty could be related to a second-order false-belief misunderstanding and/or a weak central coherence (WCC). To test this hypothesis, we conducted an experiment investigating the processing of ambiguous idiomatic expressions (Caillies & Le Sourn-Bissaoui, 2006, 2008). Participants also performed a second-order false-belief task (Baron-Cohen, 1989) and Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure test. Ten adolescents with AS and 10 typically developing controls matched for age, sex and verbal IQ took part in the study. Results indicated that the individuals with AS had greater difficulty in detecting ambiguity than the controls and that this difficulty could be partially related to a WCC or to second-order false-belief misunderstanding. The findings are discussed in the light of the multiple deficits account and the role of executive functions.

“Hunting with a knife and … fork”: Examining central coherence in autism, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and typical development with a linguistic task

A local processing bias, referred to as “weak central coherence,” has been postulated to underlie key aspects of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Little research has examined whether individual differences in this cognitive style can be found in typical development, independent of intelligence, and how local processing relates to executive control. We present a brief and easy-to-administer test of coherence requiring global sentence completions. We report results from three studies assessing (a) 176 typically developing (TD) 8- to 25-year-olds, (b) individuals with ASD and matched controls, and (c) matched groups with ASD or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The results suggest that the Sentence Completion Task can reveal individual differences in cognitive style unrelated to IQ in typical development, that most (but not all) people with ASD show weak coherence on this task, and that performance is not related to inhibitory control. The Sentence Completion Task was found to be a useful test instrument, capable of tapping local processing bias in a range of populations.

The autistic mind in the light of neuropsychological studies.

The underlying causes of autism spectrum disorders have not yet been identified. There is a group of theories which attempt to explain the source of difficulties experienced by people with these disorders through neurocognitive deficits. The most popular among them refer to deficits in theory of mind, executive dysfunction and weak central coherence. The results of over 20 years of research show that although these deficits may at least partially explain variations in the course of social development, communication difficulties and the formation of rigid patterns of behavior and interests in individuals with autism, none of them is sufficient on its own to comprehensively explain the complex picture of autistic disorders. Information about the neurobiological correlates of these deficits complement our knowledge about their mutual relationships by showing that multiple neural networks are involved in the emergence of autism's signs and symptoms. Further investigation of various aspects of these cognitive deficits and the relationships between them may significantly improve our understanding of processes involved in the development of autism.

Narrative comprehension in 4–7-year-old children with autism: testing the Weak Central Coherence account

Despite somewhat spared structural language development in high-functioning autism, communicative comprehension deficits persist. Comprehension involves the integration of meaning: global processing is required. The Weak Central Coherence theory suggests that individuals with autism are biased to process information locally. This cognitive style may impair comprehension, particularly if inferencing is required. However, task performance may be facilitated by this cognitive style if local processing is required. The current study was designed to examine the extent to which the 'weak central coherence' cognitive style affects comprehension and inferential processing of spoken narratives. The children with autism were expected to perform comparatively poorer on inferences relating to event scripts and comparatively better on inferences requiring deductive reasoning. Fourteen high-functioning children with autism were recruited from databases of various autism organizations (mean age = 6:7, 13 males, one female) and were matched on a receptive vocabulary and a picture-completion task with 14 typically developing children recruited from a local childcare centre (mean age = 4:10, seven males, seven females). The children were read short stories and asked questions about the stories. Results indicated that the children with autism were less able to make inferences based on event scripts, but the groups did not differ significantly on inferences requiring deductive logical reasoning. Despite similar group performance on questions relating to the main idea of the stories, only for the typically developing group was good performance on extracting the main idea of the narratives significantly correlated with performance on all other comprehension tasks. Findings provide some support for the Weak Central Coherence theory and demonstrate that young children with autism do not spontaneously integrate information in order to make script inferences, as do typically developing children. These findings may help to explain communicative problems of young children with autism and can be applied to intervention programme development. More research on the link between a 'weak central coherence' cognitive style and communicative comprehension in autism will be valuable in understanding the comprehension deficits associated with autism.

Perception of shapes targeting local and global processes in autism spectrum disorders

Several researchers have found evidence for impaired global processing in the dorsal visual stream in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). However, support for a similar pattern of visual processing in the ventral visual stream is less consistent. Critical to resolving the inconsistency is the assessment of local and global form processing ability. Within the visual domain, radial frequency (RF) patterns - shapes formed by sinusoidally varying the radius of a circle to add 'bumps' of a certain number to a circle - can be used to examine local and global form perception. Typically developing children and children with an ASD discriminated between circles and RF patterns that are processed either locally (RF24) or globally (RF3). Children with an ASD required greater shape deformation to identify RF3 shapes compared to typically developing children, consistent with difficulty in global processing in the ventral stream. No group difference was observed for RF24 shapes, suggesting intact local ventral-stream processing. These outcomes support the position that a deficit in global visual processing is present in ASDs, consistent with the notion of Weak Central Coherence.

A cognitive endophenotype of autism in families with multiple incidence

Twin and family studies have established that there is a strong genetic basis for autism spectrum disorders. To facilitate the identification of susceptibility genes and to study pathways from gene-brain to cognition a more refined endophenotype-based approach may be useful. The purpose of the present study was to examine the neurocognitive endophenotype of autism, in families with multiple incidence autism. Eighty-six members of 18 families containing at least two individuals with autism were neuropsychological assessed. Children with autism, showed weak central coherence, but this “trait” could not be found in their parents nor in non-affected siblings. All family members, including the sibpairs with autism, showed deficits within executive functions, involving planning ability, but normal set-shifting. The sibpairs with autism – but not their other family members – showed significant correlations within two visuo-spatial tasks. Deficits in executive functions (specifically planning ability) appear to characterize the broader endophenotype of autism. Our findings do not confirm the hypotheses of weak central coherence or deficits in theory of mind as part of the broader endophenotype of autism. Deficits in visual scanning may be a feature of the manifest phenotype of autism.

Teaching Emotion Recognition Skills to Children with Autism

Autism is associated with difficulty interacting with others and an impaired ability to recognize facial expressions of emotion. Previous teaching programmes have not addressed weak central coherence. Emotion recognition training focused on components of facial expressions. The training was administered in small groups ranging from 4 to 7 children. Improvements were significantly better for the training group (n = 20, mean age 9 years, 3 months) than a waiting list control group (n = 10, mean age 10 years, 7 months). Pre and post measures revealed an effect size of the training of Cohen's d = 1.42. The impact of the training was highly significant. There was evidence of some generalisation of the emotion recognition and improvements at follow-up.

Stimulus Overselectivity Four Decades Later: A Review of the Literature and Its Implications for Current Research in Autism Spectrum Disorder

This review of several topics related to "stimulus overselectivity" (Lovaas et al., J Abnormal Psychol 77:211-222, 1971) has three main purposes: (1) To outline the factors that may contribute to overselectivity; (2) to link the behavior-analytical notion of overselectivity to current nonbehavior-analytical research and theory; and (3) to suggest remedial strategies based on the behavior-analytical approach. While it is clear that overselectivity is not specific to autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and also that not all persons with ASD exhibit overselectivity, it is prevalent in ASD and has critical implications for symptoms, treatment, research, and theory. Weak Central Coherence and Enhanced Perceptual Functioning theories are briefly considered. The research areas addressed here include theory of mind, joint attention, language development, and executive function.

Weak central coherence and strong working memory without meaning in children with autism spectrum disorder

Weak central coherence and strong working memory without meaning in children with autism spectrum disorder

Erfasst der FBT lokale visuelle Informationsverarbeitung bei Autismus-Spektrum-Störungen?

The cognitive phenotype of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is characterized among other things by local processing (weak central coherence). It was examined whether a test that measures identification of fragmented pictures (FBT) is able to seize this preference for local processing. The FBT performance of 15 patients with ASD, 16 with depression, 16 with schizophrenia and of 16 control subjects was compared. In addition, two tests well known to be sensitive to local processing were assessed, namely the Embedded Figures Test (EFT) and the Block Design Test (BDT). ASD patients demonstrated a preference for local processing. Difficulties in global processing, or more specifically in gestalt perception (FBT), were accompanied by good performance on the EFT and BDT as expected. Controlling for age and nonverbal intelligence (ANCOVA) reduced differences to trends. However, the calculation of difference scores (i.e., subtraction of FBT from EFT performance) resulted in significant differences between ASD and control groups even after controlling for of age and intelligence. The FBT is a suitable exploratory test of local visual processing in ASD. In particular, a difference criterion can be generated (FBT vs. EFT) that discriminates between ASD and clinical as well as healthy control groups.

Conditional reasoning in autism: Activation and integration of knowledge and belief.

Everyday conditional reasoning is typically influenced by prior knowledge and belief in the form of specific exceptions known as counterexamples. This study explored whether adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; N = 26) were less influenced by background knowledge than typically developing adolescents (N = 38) when engaged in conditional reasoning. Participants were presented with pretested valid and invalid conditional inferences with varying available counterexamples. The group with ASD showed significantly less influence of prior knowledge on valid inferences (p = .01) and invalid inferences (p = .01) compared with the typical group. In a secondary probability judgment task, no significant group differences were found in probabilistic judgments of the believability of the premises. Further experiments found that results could not be explained by differences between the groups in the ability to generate counterexamples or any tendency among adolescents with ASD to exhibit a "yes" response pattern. It was concluded that adolescents with ASD tend not to spontaneously contextualize presented material when engaged in everyday reasoning. These findings are discussed with reference to weak central coherence theory and the conditional reasoning literature.

Deficit in visual temporal integration in autism spectrum disorders

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are superior in processing local features. Frith and Happe conceptualize this cognitive bias as ‘weak central coherence’, implying that a local enhancement derives from a weakness in integrating local elements into a coherent whole. The suggested deficit has been challenged, however, because individuals with ASD were not found to be inferior to normal controls in holistic perception. In these opposing studies, however, subjects were encouraged to ignore local features and attend to the whole. Therefore, no one has directly tested whether individuals with ASD are able to integrate local elements over time into a whole image. Here, we report a weakness of individuals with ASD in naming familiar objects moved behind a narrow slit, which was worsened by the absence of local salient features. The results indicate that individuals with ASD have a clear deficit in integrating local visual information over time into a global whole, providing direct evidence for the weak central coherence hypothesis.

How Do You Hear That? Autism, Blindness, and Teaching Music Theory

On Hearing[1] In the documentary film Touch The Sound, which examines Evelyn Glennie's life as a deaf percussionist, Glennie remarks,If someone asks me: 'Oh well, how do you hear that?' - then I simply say: 'I really don't know, but I just basically hear that through my body, through opening myself up. do you hear that?' ... So, when you try to bounce the question back to a so-called person, then they simply do not know how to answer these questions. So therefore, why should I be put in that position?[2] Hearing is very much a subjective experience, difficult to put into words. As hearing people, we find it very difficult to understand Glennie's experience with music. The question How do you hear that? is really a substitute for the more dubious question How can you hear that? Reinterpreting the question using the former, more inclusive meaning, Glennie still casts doubts on its intentions. Her experience with music is different, but no less valid than that of a hearing person's.[3] Music theory is often taught to reflect normative hearing. Alternate hearings are discouraged, or are at least marginalized in the classroom. Where does this leave people like Glennie whose aural understanding of music falls so far out of the norm?[4] Autism and blindness both carry with them particular experiential differences that extend to multiple perceptual realms. Normative is profoundly redefined for people with these disabilities. In this paper, I would like to make some observations about experiences I have had with two people named Noah and Laura. Diagnosed with autism at age 19 months in 2005, my son Noah developed a deep sensory connection to music and sound early in life. One year after Noah's diagnosis, Laura, a blind student with special musical talent, enrolled in my first year music theory course at Swarthmore College. I don't wish to suggest the approaches that Noah and Laura take to understanding music are generalizable to all members of their respective demographics; it is enough to understand how their modes of are deeply affected by their disabilities, which can give us some insight into the wider spectrum of musical understanding.[5] In searching for ways to connect with my son, whose verbal and social communication skills are limited, I have found music to be an invaluable resource. I would like to address my experience as a father trying to make sense of his son's world, viewing it through the prism of his understanding of and experience with music. My experiences with Noah have had a strong effect on my approach to teaching Laura, and I would also like to compare her modes of and experiencing music to his.Theories of Autism[6] In current psychological literature, there are three prevailing theories of autism designed to subsume the condition's many symptoms and diagnostic criteria. The first identifies a lack of theory of mind in individuals with autism, the inability to ascribe mental states to others. Impairment of executive function highlights the difficulty with hierarchizing thoughts and actions, producing obstacles towards initiating or inhibiting immediate actions. Finally, weak central coherence (WCC), which I will concentrate on here, posits an inability to see things holistically, finding a focus on details to the exclusion of the big picture. A classic example of WCC in autism is found in Daniel Tammet's book Born on a Blue Day (2006), in the diagram reproduced in Figure 1. When asked to identify the letters they see, autistic individuals are more likely to see an A on the left and an H on the right than their typically developing peers, who will see the opposite.Figure 1Figure 2. Which line is longer?[7] Note that all three of these theories are deficit models of autism, emphasizing inability over difference. Indeed, in the research literature, there is a tendency to position even seeming strengths resulting from cognitive difference as weaknesses. …

Impaired Competence for Pretense in Children with Autism: Exploring Potential Cognitive Predictors

Lack of pretense in children with autism has been explained by a number of theoretical explanations, including impaired mentalising, impaired response inhibition, and weak central coherence. This study aimed to empirically test each of these theories. Children with autism (n = 60) were significantly impaired relative to controls (n = 65) when interpreting pretense, thereby supporting a competence deficit hypothesis. They also showed impaired mentalising and response inhibition, but superior local processing indicating weak central coherence. Regression analyses revealed that mentalising significantly and independently predicted pretense. The results are interpreted as supporting the impaired mentalising theory and evidence against competing theories invoking impaired response inhibition or a local processing bias. The results of this study have important implications for treatment and intervention.

Talent in autism: hyper-systemizing, hyper-attention to detail and sensory hypersensitivity

We argue that hyper-systemizing predisposes individuals to show talent, and review evidence that hyper-systemizing is part of the cognitive style of people with autism spectrum conditions (ASC). We then clarify the hyper-systemizing theory, contrasting it to the weak central coherence (WCC) and executive dysfunction (ED) theories. The ED theory has difficulty explaining the existence of talent in ASC. While both hyper-systemizing and WCC theories postulate excellent attention to detail, by itself excellent attention to detail will not produce talent. By contrast, the hyper-systemizing theory argues that the excellent attention to detail is directed towards detecting 'if p, then q' rules (or [input-operation-output] reasoning). Such law-based pattern recognition systems can produce talent in systemizable domains. Finally, we argue that the excellent attention to detail in ASC is itself a consequence of sensory hypersensitivity. We review an experiment from our laboratory demonstrating sensory hypersensitivity detection thresholds in vision. We conclude that the origins of the association between autism and talent begin at the sensory level, include excellent attention to detail and end with hyper-systemizing.

Autism Overflows with Syntheses

Editor: We were surprised to find our case study “Cross-modal extinction in a boy with severely autistic behaviour and high verbal intelligence” (Bonneh et al. 2008) impugned by Professor Waterhouse (2008) as an example of “unsynthesized and hoc theories” cluttering autism research. Our article never purports to constitute a theory in itself, and from its very beginning relates our observations of singlechannel perception to an established theoretical context described in terms of stimulus overselectivity (Lovaas et al. 1979), monotropism (Murray et al. 2005), and impaired attention shifting (Allen and Courchesne 2001). Waterhouse misattributes to us a causal claim that “autism results from monochannel of [sic] winner-takes-all perceptual processing” when in fact all that we claim is that our case results support the existence of such winner-takes-all processing in autism. Our point is not to clutter and to contend with existing theory, but rather to extend such theory to ‘lowfunctioning’ cases in a way that might further the very synthesis to which Waterhouse and we all aspire— hence our unifying theme of perturbed neural interactions (Rubenstein and Merzenich 2003). Though integrative, cooperative autism research has a long way to go still, Waterhouse’s assertion that “the field has not made progress in creating a synthesized, standard predictive causal theory of autism” seems to assume that statements that do not explicitly cite or support each other must necessarily be in conflict and competition. This assumption of irreconcilability is a defeatist fallacy. As Waterhouse herself observes, ideas of weak central coherence (Happe and Frith 2006) and the various takes on abnormal connectivity (Castelli et al. 2002; Just et al. 2004; Neuropsychol Rev (2009) 19:273–274 DOI 10.1007/s11065-009-9099-9