Attention

Posting #3:  Consider attention challenges in children with autism.  How may this impact development of cognition?

People with, and without Autism vary in their cognitive abilities.  Human cognition involves the perception, processing, acquisition, retrieval, transformation, use and exchange of knowledge.  There are several differences that have been found in the way persons with ASD process information which affect cognition.  This includes categorization of information and local versus global processing.

  As we have learned and according to a study by Gastgeb (2006), person’s with Autism have difficulty categorizing and this greatly impacts how information is processed.  Categorization begins as an infant and becomes more complex as we learn to automatically sort through the extensive information our senses bombard us with.  If we are not able to filtering out irrelevant information it is hard to focus our attention on what is important or to even have a way to remember and therefore recall information. 

As studied in the article by Wang (2007), attention is the key factor in determining performance of tasks with individuals with ASD.  It was noted in the study that if the task was a locally oriented task (Embedded Figures Test, visual search, block design), then person’s with ASD did superior to controls (TD’s).  Unfortunately, it was more difficult to process and interpret information in a global perspective for person’s with ASD. Wang suggests that while people with ASD are capable of global processing, they have a marked preference to local processing. (Wang, Mottron, Peng, Berthiaume, & Dawson, 2007)

Local processing (or over select),  refers to an individual's tendency to focus on minute characteristics of an object or person, rather than the whole. For example, when looking at a car a child with ASD might not focus on the totality of the car (color, shape, individual parts), but instead will focus their attention only on one part such as the wheels. This  interferes with the understanding of what a car is because a car is obviously more than just its wheels. This tendency to focus their attention on specific features of an object or person rather than the whole hinders learning new concepts and interferes with the child's ability to interpret relevant meaning from information in their environment.

Another tendency often seen in individuals with ASD that can affect their ability to learn, is focused attention on a specific object or activity. This focused attention can last for a long time and can also be difficult to interrupt.  For example, if a child with autism has focused his attention on trains, he may continually choose to line up trains and resist playing with other toys. Focused attention may prevent a child from being able to shift attention to other people or other activities  such as a parent entering the room, a teacher giving instructions, or another child attempting to join in his/her play.

Here is a test of selective attention: (available on 4th post!).  If you have never tried it you will be amazed and really have a better understanding of why it’s so hard for children who have a difficult time with gestalt to really understanding the whole picture!

References:

Wang, L., Mottron, L., Peng, D., Berthiaume, C., & Dawson, M. (2007). Local bias and local-to-global interference without global deficit; A robust finding in autism under various conditions of attention, exposure time, and visual angle. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 550-574.

Gastgeb, H. Z., Strauss, M. S., & Minshew, N. J. (2006). Do Individuals With Autism Process Categories Differently? The Effect of Typicality and Development. Child Development, 1717-1729.