Executive Function

Pitch Perfect

Pitch discrimination and melodic memory in children with autism spectrum disorders 
by Sandy Stanutz, Joel Wapnick and Jacob A Burack

Findings:

• Memory for pitch by the children with ASD was enhanced, regardless of whether the pitch to be discriminated was in or out of context. These results supported EPF approach. 
• why is memory for musical information preserved in autism, whereas memory for language is often severely impaired (Rutter et al., 2005)? One possible answer to this question is that developmental differences in autism could dictate a stronger memory for pitched sounds as compared to speech sounds, if the enhanced pitch memory of non savant children with autism is related to the AP ability of musical savants.

Key points: ASD Short term and long term memory, savant skills ( can we identify through their cognitive learning style?)

The Extreme Male Brain

Simon Baron-Cohen

Another key person in Autism research, same as Framcesca Happe, Simon was the Phd student of Uta Frith in 1985, they collaborate to carry out many clinically psychology research.

Simon claimed that two key mental domains, verbal and spatial abilities in both sex differences have been studied, and he suggested that two neglected dimensions for understanding human sex differences are " emphathising" and " systemising". The male brain is a defined psychometrically as those individuals in whom systemising is significantly better than empathising, and the female brain is defined as the opposite cognitive profile. Base on these definitions, autism can be considered as an extreme of the normal male profile. There is increasing psychological evidence for the extreme male brain theory of autism.

Source: http://cogsci.bme.hu/~ivady/bscs/read/bc.pdf

Cognitive deficit or Cognitive style?

Autism is a devastating development disorder affecting at least one in a hundred of children and adults. Although with a strong biological genetic component, diagnosis of autism is still made by behavioral criteria: qualitative impairments in social and communicative development, with restricted and repetitive activities and interests. It is not difficult to find things that people with autism have difficulty with, most autistic people also have general learning difficulties and low IQ. However, we should explore on what autistic people are good at. Thus, we could make use of their unique cognitive style to discover the unrevealed talent or to develop the specific skills.

Much progress has been made in the last 15 years to understand the preserved and impaired abilities in autism, including nature of social and communicative handicaps in autism. Primary in this is the notion of the Theory of mind. Theory of Mind is the ability to attribute mental states, beliefs, desires, emotions, knowledge to oneself , and to others. In another term, mentalization. Autistic children have such difficulty to understand deception, pretend play and even telling lies. A hypothesis was tested using Wimmer and Perner's puppet play paradigm by Uta Frith, the result shows that even though the mental age of the autistic children was higher that those with Down's syndrome, they
failed to impute beliefs to others. Hence, it is proven that this dysfunction is independent of mental retardation and specific to autism.

Besides, autistic

Francesca Happe