Little is known regarding metacognition in individuals with autism. Specifically, it is unclear how individuals with autism think about their own mental states. The current study assessed memory awareness during a facial recognition task. High-functioning children (M=13,1 years, n=18) and adults (M=27.5 years, n =16) with autism matched with typically developing children (M =14.3 years, n =13) and adults (M =26.9 years, n=15) were tested. Children with autism demonstrated less accurate memory awareness and less reliable differentiation between their confidence ratings compared to typically developing children. Subtle impairments in memory awareness were also evident in adults with autism. Results indicate that broader metacognitive deficits may exist in individuals with autism, possibly contributing to other known impairments. Keywordsautism; face recognition; memory awareness; theory of mind; metacognition Although autism is a developmental disorder characterized by behavioral, communicative and social impairments, the majority of research on autism has focused on deficits within the social domain, including those relating to nonverbal behaviors (e.g., eye-to-eye gaze), the quality and quantity of social relationships, interpersonal sharing, and social or emotional reciprocity. Research on social deficits in individuals with autism burgeoned when children with autism were found to have impaired theory of mind, or an impaired ability to attribute mental states to others (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith;1985). Compared to typically developing children, children with autism are significantly delayed in their understanding of false-belief tasks and require a higher verbal mental age in order in order to make successful attributions about another person's mental state (Happé, 1995; Pellicano, 2007). Moreover, individuals with autism continue to have impairments in advanced tests of theory of mind into adulthood (Baron-Cohen, Jolliffe, Mortimore, & Robertson, 1997). While theory of mind continues to be the focus of much research on autism, little research has examined individuals' with autism understanding of their own mental states, or metacognition.Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to Mark S. Strauss, Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, 210 South Bouquet Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, strauss@pitt.edu. Metacognition can broadly be defined as one's general knowledge regarding any aspect of cognitive activity, either within oneself or within others (Lockl & Schneider, 2007). Under this definition, metacognition includes the knowledge typically described as theory of mind. However, more specifically, metacognition can be divided into two types, metacognitive knowledge of cognition and metacognitive regulation of cognition (Shraw & Moshman, 1995). Metacognitive knowledge refers to what an individual knows about cognition, including declarative knowledge (e.g., knowledge about oneself as a learner and about factors that influence performance), procedural knowledge (e.g., know...
There is a growing amount of evidence suggesting that individuals with autism have difficulty with face processing. One basic cognitive ability that may underlie face processing difficulties is the ability to abstract a prototype. The current study examined prototype formation with natural faces using eye-tracking in high-functioning adults with autism and matched controls. Individuals with autism were found to have significant difficulty forming prototypes of natural faces. The eyetracking data did not reveal any between group differences in the general pattern of attention to the faces, indicating that these difficulties were not due to attentional factors. Results are consistent with previous studies that have found a deficit in prototype formation and extend these deficits to natural faces. Keywordsprototype; autism; face perception; cognition It is well-known that individuals with autism have difficulties perceiving and recognizing faces, including deficits in the categorization of facial gender (e.g., Behrmann et al., 2006;Best, Minshew, & Strauss, 2010), discrimination of facial expressions, (e.g., Celani, Battacchi, & Arcidiacono, 1999;Rump, Giovannelli, Minshew, & Strauss, 2009), and face recognition (e.g., Klin, Sparrow, de Bildt, Cicchetti, Cohen, & Volkmar, 1999;Lahaie, Mottron, Arguin, Berthiaume, Jemel, & Saumier, 2006;Newell, Best, Gastgeb, Rump, & Strauss, 2010). Traditional explanations for these deficits have suggested that individuals with autism focus more on discrete facial features rather than processing configural information and perceiving faces in a holistic manner (for review see Dawson, Webb, & McPartland, 2005). In particular, it has been found that individuals with autism are less affected by the face inversion effect than typically developing individuals (e.g., Boucher & Lewis, 1992;Klin et al., 1999). Since the viewing of inverted faces disrupts configural and holistic processes, it has been argued that individuals with autism rely more on featural processing.Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to Mark S. Strauss, Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, 210 South Bouquet Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. Electronic mail may be sent to strauss@pitt.edu. Holly Zajac Gastgeb is now at Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Researchers have traditionally used bottom-up, perceptual explanations to account for face processing difficulties, arguing that individuals with autism are biased toward processing local features and are less likely to perceive global patterns (Frith & Happé, 1994;Mottron et al., 2006). These explanations suggest that the difficulties that arise in face processing are caused by underlying differences in how the perceptual aspects of faces are processed. Although differences in these bottom-up processes may exist, it is also clear that the development of expertise in face processing requires extensive learning that does not reach full maturity until adolescence or adulthood in typically developing...
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