Linking theory of mind and central coherence bias in autism and in the general population.

Abstract

Three experiments investigated whether 2 characteristic aspects of the psychological profile of autism, theory-of-mind deficits and weak central coherence, might be functionally related. Experiment 1 showed that in the general population, performance on a proposed test of theory of mind was inversely related to speed on the Embedded Figures Test, a measure of central coherence bias. Experiments 2 and 3 confirmed that poor theory-of-mind performance was linked to weak central coherence among typically developing children and among children with autism; however, the correlations between these measures were reliable only after accounting for differences in individuals' verbal mental ages. This pattern of results is interpreted in terms of a relationship between individual differences in theory of mind and central coherence bias, a relationship that is separate from any developmental differences in these domains.

Sex and Discipline Differences in Empathising, Systemising and Autistic Symptomatology: Evidence from a Student Population

“…Second, that strengths and weaknesses that characterise autistic individuals map onto the two major areas of sex differences that he describes: empathising and systemising. Third, as Jarrold, Butler, Cottingham and Jimenez, (2000) suggest, these two areas of skill should be negatively correlated, so Sex and discipline differences 5 that individuals with high systemising abilities would tend to show low levels of empathising, and vice versa. It is not clear, however, that Baron-Cohen assumes that empathising and systemising would be correlated in the general population.…”

“…The men in the group showed worse scores on the Mind in the Eyes test and better scores on the EFT than the women, suggesting that men do indeed show a mild version of the strengths and weaknesses shown in autism, though sex differences on a revised version of the Mind in the Eyes test were only marginally significant (Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill et al, 2001). Jarrold et al (2000) conducted a detailed investigation of the claims of the Extreme Male Brain theory of autism. They investigated performance on standard theory of mind and embedded figures tasks in typically developing children and adults, as well as a group of children with autism.…”

Combating fuzziness with computational modeling

“…Other evidence in support of this position comes from experimental work in autism, where weak central coherence has been associated with poor ToM performance (Jarrold et al 2000). Jarrold et al postulate that ToM is a high level manifestation of central coherence, the latter being a concept that has significant overlap with cognitive coordination, but without specification at the computational or neurobiological levels.…”

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

“…However, the observation that only mentalising significantly and independently predicted pretend play provides evidence of at least some independence of these variables. Conversely, lack of a significant relationship between mentalising and local processing tends to disconfirm the claim that performance on ToM tasks reflects a bias towards local processing as implied by Jarrold et al (2000). However, this does not preclude an association between global processing and mentalising (Happé & Booth, 2008) as discussed below.…”