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Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

Gepubliceerd in:

01-12-2009 | Original Paper

Identifying Symbolic Relationships in Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Deficit in the Identification of Temporal Co-occurrence?

Auteurs: Catherine S. Ames, Chris Jarrold

Gepubliceerd in: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders | Uitgave 12/2009

Abstract

Individuals with Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) experience difficulties understanding the non-verbal cues conveyed by others that provide symbolic information about relationships between self, other, and environmental events. This study examined whether these difficulties reflect underlying problems in the identification of temporal co-occurrence, or in memorial, associative, or inference skills. The performance of a group of adolescents with ASD was compared to that of typically developing children and adolescents with learning difficulties on four tasks assessing these processes. The ASD group experienced specific difficulties when they were required to identify relationships signalled by the temporal co-occurrence of stimuli. These results are discussed in relation to theories of conceptual deduction in ASD, and a hypothesised role in social cognitive development for attention processes is outlined.

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The second row formed the basis for a second condition of this experiment, the results of which are not presented here. It had no bearing on the Temporal Inference task condition reported here, and was presented after the data presented here had been collected.

Analysis of the regression slopes did reveal that the assumption of homogeneity was violated in the relationship between RCPM and both the memory span F(2, 45) = 6.19, p = .004, η _p ² = .22, and the total memory trials correct, F(2, 45) = 7.34, p = .002, η _p ² = .25. However, further analysis showed that the inclusion of this covariate did not change the outcome relative to the uncovaried analysis. Hence, both BPVS and Ravens scores are included as covariates throughout in each set of results reported in this paper.

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Titel: Identifying Symbolic Relationships in Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Deficit in the Identification of Temporal Co-occurrence?
Auteurs: Catherine S. Ames
Chris Jarrold
Publicatiedatum: 01-12-2009
Uitgeverij: Springer US
Gepubliceerd in: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders / Uitgave 12/2009
Print ISSN: 0162-3257
Elektronisch ISSN: 1573-3432
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-009-0808-2

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