Primary Childhood Aphasia and Childhood Autism: Clinical, Biological, and Conceptual Observations

Cohen, Donald J.; Caparulo, Barbara K.; Shaywitz, Bennett A.

doi:10.1097/00004583-197601540-00002

Cited by 65 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 82 publications

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“…The role of “low-level” abnormalities of arousal, attention orienting, and sensory responsiveness in people with ASD has been discussed since it had been established by the scientific community that autism has a biological, rather than a social underpinning (Rimland, 1964; Ornitz and Ritvo, 1968; Cohen et al, 1976; Ornitz, 1989). Gradually, the focus of autism research has shifted to investigating higher-order disturbances, such as the “theory of mind” deficit (Baron-Cohen et al, 1985), decreased central coherence (Frith and Happe, 1994), and impaired “mirror neurons” functioning (Williams et al, 2001).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Arousal and attention re-orienting in autism spectrum disorders: evidence from auditory event-related potentials

Orekhova

Stroganova

2014

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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The extended phenotype of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) includes a combination of arousal regulation problems, sensory modulation difficulties, and attention re-orienting deficit. A slow and inefficient re-orienting to stimuli that appear outside of the attended sensory stream is thought to be especially detrimental for social functioning. Event-related potentials (ERPs) and magnetic fields (ERFs) may help to reveal which processing stages underlying brain response to unattended but salient sensory event are affected in individuals with ASD. Previous research focusing on two sequential stages of the brain response—automatic detection of physical changes in auditory stream, indexed by mismatch negativity (MMN), and evaluation of stimulus novelty, indexed by P3a component,—found in individuals with ASD either increased, decreased, or normal processing of deviance and novelty. The review examines these apparently conflicting results, notes gaps in previous findings, and suggests a potentially unifying hypothesis relating the dampened responses to unattended sensory events to the deficit in rapid arousal process. Specifically, “sensory gating” studies focused on pre-attentive arousal consistently demonstrated that brain response to unattended and temporally novel sound in ASD is already affected at around 100 ms after stimulus onset. We hypothesize that abnormalities in nicotinic cholinergic arousal pathways, previously reported in individuals with ASD, may contribute to these ERP/ERF aberrations and result in attention re-orienting deficit. Such cholinergic dysfunction may be present in individuals with ASD early in life and can influence both sensory processing and attention re-orienting behavior. Identification of early neurophysiological biomarkers for cholinergic deficit would help to detect infants “at risk” who can potentially benefit from particular types of therapies or interventions.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Arousal and attention re-orienting in autism spectrum disorders: evidence from auditory event-related potentials

Orekhova

Stroganova

2014

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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“…Previous research on this topic suffers several methodological limitations, such as small sample sizes and a lack of consistent age groups between studies. In fact, only a few studies have investigated gestures produced by infants or preschoolers with autism (Carpenter et al, 2002; Colgan et al, 2006; Keen, 2005; Töret and Acarlar, 2011; Watson et al, 2013; Willemsen-Swinkels et al, 1998), while most of the relevant studies have analyzed gestures produced by school-age children with autism (Hobson et al, 2010; Landry and Loveland, 1989; Loveland and Landry, 1986; Pedersen and Schelde, 1997), or focused on a large range of ages between participants (Cohen et al, 1976; Stone and Caro-Martinez, 1990). Moreover, previous studies that investigated gestural production in autism in infant or school-age have often used retrospective analysis of home videos (Colgan et al, 2006; Watson et al, 2013), and only a few studies have analyzed gestural production in naturalistic contexts of interaction using an observational coding scheme (Carpenter et al, 2002; Keen, 2005; Töret and Acarlar, 2011; Willemsen-Swinkels et al, 1998).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gestural communication in children with autism spectrum disorders during mother–child interaction

Mastrogiuseppe

Capirci

Cuva

et al. 2014

Autism

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Children with autism spectrum disorders display atypical development of gesture production, and gesture impairment is one of the determining factors of autism spectrum disorder diagnosis. Despite the obvious importance of this issue for children with autism spectrum disorder, the literature on gestures in autism is scarce and contradictory. The purpose of this study was to analyze gestural communication in children with autism spectrum disorder during spontaneous mother-child interaction. Participants were children with autism spectrum disorder (n = 20), Down's syndrome (n = 20), and typical development (n = 20) and their mothers. Children's mean developmental age was 24.16 months (standard deviation = 1.45 months) and did not differ across the groups. Gestural communication was analyzed with a specific coding scheme allowing a quantitative and qualitative analysis of gestural production. Results showed the following: (a) differences between autism spectrum disorder, typical development, and Down's syndrome groups in the total number of gestures produced; (b) differences between the three groups in the distribution of gesture types; and (c) specific correlations between gestural production, cognitive development, and autism severity scores. The study of gestures in autism spectrum disorder could help us to identify different phenotypes in autism and could also lead to the development of new therapies.

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“…The second research front was primarily led by child psychiatrists in centers where clinical diagnosis was taken quite seriously. This included work by Rutter at the Maudsley Hospital (Lockyer & Rutter, 1969) and Cohen at Yale (Cohen, Capurolo, & Shaywitz, 1976), as well as Rapin, a child neurologist (Rapin & Allen, 1983). A third movement was led by psychologists who began to develop standardized measures for screening and describing children with autism.…”

Section: Shifts In Conceptualizing Autismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Autism: From research to practice.

Lord¹

2010

American Psychologist

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Autism is the most commonly studied of a spectrum of developmental disorders that are believed to be neurobiologically based but which, at this point, for lack of good biomarkers, are defined purely by behavior. In the last 20 years, the definition of autism has shifted in emphasis from extreme aloofness and positive signs of abnormality in repetitive and sensori-motor behaviors to a greater awareness of the importance of more subtle reciprocal social-communication deficits as core features. Standard diagnostic instruments were developed for research purposes to acquire information both through caregiver interviews and direct clinical observation. Use of these instruments in clinical practice resulted in major improvements which in turn affected research results. These results yielded further improvements that led to changes in clinical practice over time. The synergism between research and clinical practice in the understanding of autism is discussed.

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Primary Childhood Aphasia and Childhood Autism: Clinical, Biological, and Conceptual Observations

Cited by 65 publications

References 82 publications

Arousal and attention re-orienting in autism spectrum disorders: evidence from auditory event-related potentials

Arousal and attention re-orienting in autism spectrum disorders: evidence from auditory event-related potentials

Gestural communication in children with autism spectrum disorders during mother–child interaction

Autism: From research to practice.

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