Comprehension of concrete and abstract words in autistic children

Eskes, Gail A.; Bryson, Susan E.; McCormick, Terry A.

doi:10.1007/bf02206857

Cited by 99 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…The effect size of deficits has been estimated to be medium-tolarge, more pronounced in autism than in other disorders characterized by disinhibition, and largest for differences on Wisconsin Card Sort Perseveration and Tower tasks than in other disorders characterized by disinhibition (Sergeant, Geurts, & Oosterlaan, 2002;Pennington & Ozonoff, 1996). However, not all studies reveal executive function deficit in autism: whereas there are consistent deficits in planning and flexibility, tests that assess inhibition, working memory, and attention do not consistently reveal impairments (Ozonoff & Jensen, 1999;Ozonoff & Strayer, 1997;Eskes, Bryson, & McCormick, 1990;Goldberg, Mostofsky, Cutting, Mahone, Astor, Denckla, & Landa, 2005). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Because individuals with autism demonstrate intact behavioral performance on nonsocial tasks of interference inhibition (Ozonoff & Jensen, 1999;Eskes, Bryson, & McCormick, 1990) and automatic shift of attention in responses to static gaze direction (reviewed above), we predicted that both incongruent conditions (i.e., both arrows and gaze stimuli) would affect response accuracy in the autism group in a fashion similar to neurotypical participants and there would not be diagnostic group differences on behavioral performance on this task.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Social stimuli interfere with cognitive control in autism

2007

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Autism spectrum disorders are characterized by cognitive control deficits as well as impairments in social interactions. However, the brain mechanisms mediating the interactive effects of these deficits have not been addressed. We employed event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the effects of processing directional information from faces on activity within brain regions mediating cognitive control. High-functioning individuals with autism and age-, gender-, and IQ-matched neurotypical individuals attended to the direction of a centrally-presented arrow or gaze stimulus with similar flanker stimuli oriented in the same ("congruent") or opposite ("incongruent") direction. The incongruent arrow condition was examined to assess functioning of brain regions mediating cognitive control in a context without social-cognitive demands, whereas the incongruent gaze condition assessed functioning of the same brain regions in a social-cognitive context. Consistent with prior studies, the incongruent arrow condition recruited activity in bilateral midfrontal gyrus, right inferior frontal gyrus, bilateral intraparietal sulcus, and the anterior cingulate relative to the congruent arrow condition in neurotypical participants. Notably, there were not diagnostic group differences in patterns of regional fMRI activation in response to the arrow condition. However, while viewing the incongruent gaze stimuli, although neurotypical participants recruited the same brain regions, participants with autism showed marked hypoactivation in these areas. These findings suggest that processing social-cognitive stimuli interferes with functioning of brain regions recruited during cognitive control tasks in autism. Implications for research into cognitive control deficits in autism are discussed.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social stimuli interfere with cognitive control in autism

2007

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“…To control for task performance across patient and control groups, we used the Stroop task because it is known that autistic patients are unimpaired in this task relative to controls (32,33). To demonstrate that the magnitude of the deactivation effect in these regions can be modulated in control but not autistic subjects without changing the specific task demands, three conditions of the counting Stroop task were used: one with incongruent-number stimuli, one with emotional stimuli, and one with neutral stimuli.…”

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confidence: 99%

Failing to deactivate: Resting functional abnormalities in autism

Kennedy

Redcay²,

Courchesne³

2006

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

508

394

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Several regions of the brain (including medial prefrontal cortex, rostral anterior cingulate, posterior cingulate, and precuneus) are known to have high metabolic activity during rest, which is suppressed during cognitively demanding tasks. With functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), this suppression of activity is observed as ''deactivations,'' which are thought to be indicative of an interruption of the mental activity that persists during rest. Thus, measuring deactivation provides a means by which restassociated functional activity can be quantitatively examined. Applying this approach to autism, we found that the autism group failed to demonstrate this deactivation effect. Furthermore, there was a strong correlation between a clinical measure of social impairment and functional activity within the ventral medial prefrontal cortex. We speculate that the lack of deactivation in the autism group is indicative of abnormal internally directed processes at rest, which may be an important contribution to the social and emotional deficits of autism.default mode ͉ functional MRI ͉ introspection ͉ medial prefrontal cortex ͉ precuneus I nternally directed processes, such as self-reflective thought and most higher-order social and emotional processes, consistently activate a medial cortical network involving several brain regions, namely, the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and adjacent rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC), posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), and precuneus (PrC) (1-4). Interestingly, this network is active when normal subjects are passively resting (5), leading many to speculate that these internally directed thoughts dominate the resting state (6-9). Self-reports from subjects while at rest further support this interpretation, wherein they typically describe ''autobiographical reminiscences, either recent or ancient, consisting of familiar faces, scenes, dialogues, stories, and melodies'' (8). Conversely, activity in this midline ''resting network'' is reduced when subjects perform externally directed, attention-demanding, goal-oriented tasks (such as the Stroop task or math calculations), and the resulting ''deactivation'' of this network is thought to be an indicator of an interruption of ongoing internally directed thought processes (5, 6, 9-11). In this context, the term deactivation simply refers to activity that is greater during rest than during task performance (i.e., the opposite of the more typically reported activations). Thus, an objective method for testing the functioning of this midline resting network is to measure whether there is deactivation in these regions during externally directed tasks as compared with passive rest. Similar approaches of examining this ''deactivation effect'' have been used in studies of patients with fragile X (12), a developmental disorder with some characteristics that overlap with autism, and in patients with dementia of the Alzheimer type (13) and Alzheimer's disease (14).There are several lines of evidence that suggest that this resting network m...

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“…Several paradigms have shown no impairments in people with autism in response inhibition, such as Stroop tasks (Eskes et al 1990;Ozonoff and Jensen 1999;Schmitz et al 2006), "go-no-go" tasks (Schmitz et al 2006), simple inhibition in "go-no-go" tasks (Ozonoff and Strayer 1997;Ozonoff et al 1994), stop-signal tasks (Ozonoff and Strayer 1997), negative priming tasks (Brian et al 2003;Ozonoff and Strayer 1997), and switch tasks (Schmitz et al 2006). All these paradigms have simple inhibition as the common factor.…”

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confidence: 99%

Inhibitory Control in High-Functioning Autism: Decreased Activation and Underconnectivity in Inhibition Networks

Kana

Keller

Minshew

et al. 2007

Biological Psychiatry

406

305

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Background: Inhibiting prepotent responses is critical to optimal cognitive and behavioral function across many domains. Several behavioral studies have investigated response inhibition in autism, and the findings varied according to the components involved in inhibition. There has been only one published functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study so far on inhibition in autism, which found greater activation in participants with autism than control participants.

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Comprehension of concrete and abstract words in autistic children

Cited by 99 publications

References 27 publications

Social stimuli interfere with cognitive control in autism

Social stimuli interfere with cognitive control in autism

Failing to deactivate: Resting functional abnormalities in autism

Inhibitory Control in High-Functioning Autism: Decreased Activation and Underconnectivity in Inhibition Networks

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