Difference between revisions of "Weak Coherence"

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===Description===
 
===Description===
 
*History
 
*History
The Weak Central Coherence theory for ASD was first suggested by Uta Frith to explain the results for autistic participants' performance on theory of mind tasks. As the theory became more well-known, scientists saw that, in contrast to theory of mind false-belief tasks where approximately 20 percent of autistic study participants passed, all autistic participants showed significant task performance differences compared with control groups on tasks designed to test for central coherence. So the theory began to evolve beyond Frith's original proposition as scientists began to suggest that central coherence characterizes autistic people at all levels of theory of mind ability. Some scientists believe that this theory is a more useful framework than the Theory of Mind for explaining the cognitive causes of ASD.  
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The Weak Central Coherence theory for ASD was first suggested by Uta Frith to explain the results for autistic participants' performance on theory of mind tasks. As the theory became more well-known, scientists saw that, in contrast to theory of mind false-belief tasks where approximately 20 percent of autistic study participants passed, all autistic participants showed significant task performance differences compared with control groups on tasks designed to test for central coherence. So the theory began to evolve beyond Frith's original proposition as scientists began to suggest that central coherence characterizes autistic people at all levels of theory of mind ability. Some scientists believe that this theory is a more useful framework than the Theory of Mind for explaining the cognitive causes of ASD because it also explains the superior performance of ASD study participants on certain detail oriented tasks as well as the weaker performance on other theory of mind tasks. Another useful way to think of autism is by accepting both Theory of Mind and Weak Coherence as working together to explain ASD in entirety.<sup>2</sup>
  
 
*Theory
 
*Theory
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=====References=====
 
=====References=====
1. The Weak Coherence Account: Detail-focused Cognitive Style in Autism Spectrum Disorders.  J Autism Dev Disord. 2006 Jan;36(1):5-25 PMID 16450045
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1. Happé F, Frith U. The Weak Coherence Account: Detail-focused Cognitive Style in Autism Spectrum Disorders.  J Autism Dev Disord. 2006 Jan;36(1):5-25 PMID 16450045
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2. Frith U, Happe F. Autism: beyond "theory of mind".Cognition. 1994 Apr-Jun;50(1-3):115-32. Review. PMID 8039356

Revision as of 13:55, 27 April 2009


Papers List | Variables List

Weak Coherence and ASD

Description

  • History

The Weak Central Coherence theory for ASD was first suggested by Uta Frith to explain the results for autistic participants' performance on theory of mind tasks. As the theory became more well-known, scientists saw that, in contrast to theory of mind false-belief tasks where approximately 20 percent of autistic study participants passed, all autistic participants showed significant task performance differences compared with control groups on tasks designed to test for central coherence. So the theory began to evolve beyond Frith's original proposition as scientists began to suggest that central coherence characterizes autistic people at all levels of theory of mind ability. Some scientists believe that this theory is a more useful framework than the Theory of Mind for explaining the cognitive causes of ASD because it also explains the superior performance of ASD study participants on certain detail oriented tasks as well as the weaker performance on other theory of mind tasks. Another useful way to think of autism is by accepting both Theory of Mind and Weak Coherence as working together to explain ASD in entirety.2

  • Theory

Central Coherence refers to a person's ability to understand things in a specific context. The Theory of Weak Coherence as it applies to ASD suggests that people with ASD preferentially use a detail-focused processing style over a more global, integrative processing style that predominates as a person ages. This bias toward detail-focused processing can be seen through open-ended tasks which require strong attention to detail, where the ASD research group participants perform significantly better than the typically developing control group. ASD patients, however, still are able to globally process stimuli as seen in selective attention tasks where participants are explicitly told to pay attention to global information. In particular, one popular way of examining processing style bias in ASD is through facial processing because faces could be processed both featurally or configurally. However,these findings cannot necessarily be generalized to other types of stimuli because of the special significance of faces in processing. 1

Participants with autism appear to be able to integrate the various properties of an object and to process the meaning of individual words, but it is when people with ASD have to integrate words or objects that coherence is weak. Additionally, participants may seem to dispaly global processing when really the result is a chaining effect, where a global view can be created by taking into account only items that can be processed locally.

Criticisms

There have been conflicting or negative findings for some tests for weak coherence in ASD. Some suggest that this may be because of differences in test-question wording; for example, when Scott et. al. asked study participants with ASD whether two lines of an illusion "looked the same length," the participants performed similarly to control groups, but when ASD participants were asked whether two lines "were the same length," they were more accurate than controls. Additionally, certain selective attention tests are particularly sensitive to small variations in methodologies. 1

Another criticism is that most tasks that test for processing assume that local and global processing levels operate antagonistically, such as in the Navon taks and the EFT. There could theoretically be other situations where the two may not necessarily act in competition with each other. 1

Tests for Weak coherence

Embedded Figures Test

Block Design

Homograph Reading

References

1. Happé F, Frith U. The Weak Coherence Account: Detail-focused Cognitive Style in Autism Spectrum Disorders. J Autism Dev Disord. 2006 Jan;36(1):5-25 PMID 16450045 2. Frith U, Happe F. Autism: beyond "theory of mind".Cognition. 1994 Apr-Jun;50(1-3):115-32. Review. PMID 8039356