Sistema radical de la vid

As one of the most common neurodevelopmental disabilities and a focus of a great deal of social and political energy, autism research has become one of the best funded and active areas of psychological and educational investigation. In the decade preceding the publication of the Textbook of Clinical Neuropsychology in 2008, Stefanatos and Joe estimate that nearly 4000 articles concerned with understanding autism had appeared in scientific journals—a volume representing an iterative doubling of output over each of the four consecutive decades

documented. At the time of the writing of this dissertation, an informal perusal of the search term “autism” in the PsychINFO database suggests that the half decade or so since the estimate made by Stefanatos and Joe has seen easily another doubling. With this intensity of research attention, autism has become far too extensive a topic for even the most ambitious review to address in any kind of comprehensive way. Any useful inquiry, therefore, must be narrowly and specifically focused; the current review takes as its area of inquiry the strengths of autistic neurology20 and the implications of a strengths-based approach for creating effective educational interventions. Most psychological research in the past has operated from a deficit-based perspective informed by the DSM definition. A huge portion of the autism literature, for example, has been focused on elucidating the core pathology of autism by investigating the various observed symptoms and traits of the disorder, rather than focusing on the strengths of autistic functioning. The first half of this chapter therefore situates research on autistic strengths within the core deficit conversation by summarizing the three leading theories of autism etiology. These three theories are, the “Theory of Mind” deficit hypothesis, the Executive Functioning deficit

20 _{“Autistic neurology” is used here because of its common usage in the autistic community as an} identity term. For example, autistics sometimes speak of “feeling discriminated against due to my neurology.”

hypothesis, and the Weak Central Coherence hypothesis. The psychological research community has not reached consensus on any of these three theories as being the single “core deficit”

underlying autism because each hypothesis has generated disconfirmatory evidence.

Given the lack of consensus and the increasing sense of urgency surrounding autism, innovative new researchers from both inside and outside the psychological research community have suggested revolutionary new ways of understanding both the causes and manifestations of autism. The second half of this chapter explores four recent theories for the etiology of autism, all influenced to a greater or lesser degree by the recent strengths-based perspectives that have emerged to counter the deficit-informed accounts of older DSM-based conceptualizations.

Finally, because this dissertation proposes that web based resources offer one possible route for making available improved education for autistic students to general education

teachers, and because the internet is a useful and frequently used platform for offering resources to educators, a brief review of web resources was conducted. As it was impossible to review resources on the web according to the conventions of academic research standard for academic papers, the web review is not included in this literature review chapter but rather appended at the end of the dissertation (see Appendix A21).

The main purpose of the web review should not be thought of as a review of current web literature, so much as an impressionistic snapshot of availability of web-based resources in a specific area of autism resources for general education teachers at one moment in time. The “web review” makes the case for a need for educator resources by documenting the general paucity of online resources designed specifically to address the domains of autistic perception and cognition

21 _{Note: Because the citation of resources on the web represents a non-standard use of citations}

for an academic paper, and because information on the web is subject to rapid change and evolution, it should be noted that those citations are not included in standard “literature review” format but rather included more as a kind of data in and of themselves.

and their implications for practical application (specifically, the web review demonstrates a general lack of resources that instruct educators how to use neurologically-informed

understandings of differences in autistic cognition and learning to support effective lesson planning and instruction).

Parameters of the Review

As noted already, the field of autism research is far too vast to cover in any one summary. Because the overarching goal of this review is to promote a paradigm-shifting understanding of autism, this review primarily focuses on one particular aspect of autism: the phenomenon of exceptional strengths frequently called “islets of ability” or “slinter skills.” Exceptional abilities in autism are increasingly understood to be not only associated with, or emblematic of autism, but more fundamentally, to be a core defining feature of the syndrome (Happe, 1999; Mottron et al., 2012). The study of exceptional strengths is fascinating in and of itself, but ultimately the study of disparate strengths across the spectrum22 may serve a larger function in contributing to a case for an entirely new understanding of autism.

Accordingly, the first half of this review chapter begins by examining individual findings of exceptional strengths that offer disconfirming evidence for the historically proposed theories of autistic “core deficits.” The second half of this chapter follows the implications of these anomalous findings into the new territory of some of the most exciting new proposals for

theories of autistic functioning. The Introduction chapter of this dissertation built a historical and

22 _{One of the hallmarks of autism that diagnosticians look for is the so-called “sawtoothed} profile” of abilities—that is, larger than typical difference in abilities in various domains,

especially a difference between verbal abilities and perceptual abilities. Analysis of IQ results at the level of comparing performance on individual subtests using tables that indicate the

frequency of atypically large disparities. Such analysis can help bring to light, on the one hand, unusual degrees of impairments such as slow processing speed or delays in motor development, in the presence of otherwise high performance, especially on perceptual or pattern recognition tasks.

political case for the need to re-envision autism through a lens of difference rather than deficit. This chapter examines trends in the literature to demonstrate that some specific threads in the field of empirical research, for different reasons and along different paths, are coming to very much the same conclusion.

Before diving into this very specific subset of the literature, however, it is worth pausing for a moment to remember the intended stakeholders in this training resource project—teachers in general education classrooms, and ultimately autistic students such educational interventions are intended to serve. The previous chapter detailed how a strengths-based perspective answers the needs of autistics, but it remains relevant to ask: is a strengths-based perspective on autism one that will best serve general education teachers? Might it be the case that such educators would benefit more from training in the vulnerabilities and areas of impaired functioning in autistic students? This review proposes that there are three compelling reasons, from a

pedagogical perspective, to frame an investigation of autism from a strengths-based perspective: First, an appreciation for strengths counters stigma. Any poorly understood syndrome brings with it a stigma of difference and challenge, and autism certainly falls into that category. General education teachers fill an educational role that already demands a great deal from its practitioners. Increases in inclusion mean such teachers are now faced with challenges of which they may have little understanding and for which they have few institutional supports.

Depending on when they were trained, mainstream inclusion of atypical learners may not have been a teaching demand that teachers prepared for or even considered during their pre-service training (Mader, 2017). Due to the deficit focus of the DSM, information about autistic deficits currently dominates available resources on autism, not to mention popular media, and likely constitutes the majority of what general education teachers have encountered. A strengths-based

understanding of autism can help reframe the profile of autistic students to an understanding of autistic functioning that brings assets and strengths as well as challenges—a perception that may foster more positive attitudes toward autistic inclusion among general education teachers.

Second, teaching to student strengths powerfully engages learners. An understanding of the unique and characteristic strengths of autistic students may help inform generative

pedagogical practices that take as their target the fostering of aptitudes as well as the remediation of deficits. While remediation is the dominant focus of most special education interventions, there is broad consensus among educators that engaging students where they are most motivated and capable is a better way to help them thrive academically. In a syndrome that is poorly understood in general, autistic strengths are one of the least understood and least studied aspects of the condition. A better understanding of what autistic people do well can not only help educators to design better, more targeted curriculum, but can help peers learn greater respect for autistic students, and help autistic students increase their self-knowledge and enhance their resilience.

Finally, when better understood from a neurologic foundation, autistic deficits can

actually be understood as strengths. From a psychological research perspective, some of the most exciting work on neurological functioning in this elusive, multi-modal syndrome is emerging from the area of strengths research. It is becoming clear that some of the best-known deficits of autism, when better understood from a neuropsychological and sensory processing perspective, can be viewed as some of the greatest assets. Therefore, the study of deficits actually includes within it the study of strengths (though from a new and different perspective).

This project takes the stance that, as highly trained professionals, educators are the most appropriate and best equipped providers when it comes to designing their classroom culture,

creating effective learning experiences for their students, and making decisions about specific interventions for autistic students. In providing effective educational experiences for autistic students, what educators need from the field of psychology is not a lesson in how to do their jobs, but rather an accessible and empirically supported understanding of the neurology of autism and its implications for autistic perception and cognition (teachers do not need more fish, they need to know how to fish for themselves). The next section of this review therefore summarizes the most influential historical theories and most exciting emergent hypotheses in light of autism strengths findings with the purpose of providing detailed and relevant neuropsychological information for educators on the current best understandings of autism in the psychological research with the ultimate aim of translating that information into practical educational applications into applied pedagogical practice.

Disease Model Research and the Search for the “Core Deficit”

Since the original delineation of the autism syndrome in the 1940s by Leo Kanner, many models have been advanced to explain the heterogeneous, enigmatic patterns of atypical

performance that characterize autism. Most of these theories have sought to determine a single “core deficit” which can explain these disparate impairments and atypicalities. The vast majority of the research on autistic functioning, emerging as it does from a deficit-model paradigm, has focused on impaired rather than enhanced abilities, however, a few threads of recent work have begun to reverse this trend (e.g., Biklen & Burke, 2006; Mottron, Peretz, & Menard, 2000; Winter-Messiers, 2007).

In the last three decades, the various influential hypotheses modeling the underlying neural substrates of autism have coalesced into three main theories which currently dominate autism research: the theory that autism is caused by a deficit in Theory of Mind (ToM), that is, a

deficit in the ability to impute mental states to oneself and others (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985), the executive function (EF) hypothesis, which contends that autistic symptoms are a function of deficits in ability to plan and monitor complex actions (Ozonoff, Pennington, & Rogers, 1991), and the weak central coherence hypothesis, which conceptualizes autistic dysfunction as a tendency to focus on local details at the expense of global wholes (Happe & Frith, 2006).

Each of these theories has been extensively researched, generating enough confirmatory results to influence continuing research investigations on all three hypotheses. However, in each case, contradictory evidence has emerged to the extent that none has been fully endorsed by the autism research community as the “core deficit” so assiduously sought. Because these theories would not have the influence they do without substantial support, this review will presume they are well-described already, and leave the summarizing of confirmatory findings on autism

deficits to others (e.g., see Schmitz & Rezaie, 2008, for a comprehensive review). As has already been indicated, the current review will instead examine examples of disconfirming evidence that has emerged in contradiction of these deficit-based conceptualizations.

Historical Review: Challenging the Three Influential Theories of the Etiology of Autism “Theory of Mind” deficit hypothesis. The Theory of Mind (ToM) model was the earliest of these three hypotheses to be put forward (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985). Deficits in the ability to form a “Theory of Mind” (ToM) are often measured by a “false belief” task to determine if the subject is able to understand that others may have false beliefs because they lack information on the true state of affairs as known by the subject (Stefanatos & Joe, 2008). The “Sally Ann” unexpected transfer test is a well-known version of this task (Ann puts an item in a box. Sally moves the item from the box to a basket while Ann is out of the room.

Typically developing children tend to realize that when Ann returns, she will look in the box where she left the item, while children with the hypothesized ‘poor theory of mind’ are more likely to believe that Ann will look in the basket where the test subject knows the item actually to be.)

Such a measure would be an excellent diagnostic tool if the responses of autistic

individuals were consistent, however, even the original proponent of this model acknowledged in a review, a decade after her original publication, that failure rates for autistic children on ToM tests vary as widely as 40% to 85% (Happe, 1995). Findings such as these have led researchers increasingly to conclude that the Theory of Mind hypothesis may, in fact, describe

heterogeneous skills sets which are not unitary constructs, and which may follow widely varying developmental trajectories (Robinson et al. 2009).

Nor does Theory of Mind appear to be consistent across domains of ability. A recent study on inner dialog in autistic children conducted by the original proponents of ToM (and others) provides evidence that suggests at least some preserved ToM abilities in autistic children. Participants were 25 children diagnosed with ASD (of whom three were female), and 20

moderately learning disabled children, (of whom five were female). Subjects were matched for chronological age, verbal mental age, performance IQ and full scale IQ. Drawing on Vygotsky’s notion that inner speech, as an internalization of external dialog mediates higher metal functions (Vygotsky, 1962, as cited in Williams et al., 2007), the researchers suggested that if the transition to dialogic modes requires adequate experience of interpersonal relations, autistic children would be expected to make use of inner speech for problem solving in a more limited way. The research design took advantage of the “phonological similarity effect.” This is an effect where

and is taken to be an artifact that is a robust indicator of inner speech (Hitch, Woodin, & Baker, 1989). The investigators presented the participants with three serial recall tasks and found that, rather than demonstrating deficits, autistic children showed no significant difference in

performance as compared to learning disabled children in the use of inner speech to assist in recall, as long as children were matched for verbal mental age (as measured by verbal IQ on the WISC III). These researchers concluded that use of inner speech as a problem-solving strategy appeared to be intact in autism.

Another way that has been used analyze ToM is to evaluate subjects’ ability to assess the mental states of others based on their ability to process emotional information observed from facial data. A study by Krysko & Rutherford (2009) examined the ability of autistic adults to detect threatening faces in a crowd as an indication of facial processing efficiency. The study took advantage of the “anger superiority effect” (Ashwin, Wheelwright, & Baron-Cohen, 2006) in which angry faces are detected more quickly than faces displaying other emotions,

(presumably due to the evolutionary advantage of keen ability to perceive threat). Participants were 38 males with “high-functioning autism” (HFA) ranging in age from 20 to 54 with a mean age of 29.3, and 19 males with a history of typical development (TD) between 20 and 46, with a mean age of 28.6. Subjects were matched on full scale IQ (FSIQ) as measured by the WAIS III. The study found that autistic men showed ability on threat detection tasks equal to that of TD men, demonstrating both similar reaction times and similar accuracy. The only impairment found was that the autistic subjects’ accuracy declined when presented with large crowd sizes. The researchers noted that the experimental design was not sufficient to determine if autistic subjects were using a typical or an atypical processing strategy, but suggested that an atypical processing strategy might explain the decay at larger numbers. It is also possible (though not addressed by

the researchers in their discussion) that such impairment could be a result of an unrelated

capacity issue such as limits to working memory or the sensory/emotional overload of processing so many faces.

The ToM hypothesis predicts that autistic children will not only fail to impute mental states to others (cognitive knowledge), but will show impairment in processing and

understanding others’ emotions (affective awareness). A study on ability of autistic subjects to recognize emotions in others examined the ability of autistic children to recognize and report both “non-social” and “social” emotions in others (Williams & Happe, 2010). This study compared 21 “high functioning” students diagnosed with autism (IQ above 70) to 21 children with general learning disability (the ages of the subjects were not given). The test group included subjects with a diagnosis of autism (n = 18), Asperger’s Disorder (AD; n = 2), and PDD-NOS (n = 1). All autistic subjects attended specialist autism schools, while all LD students attended schools for children with developmental and special education needs. The study was designed to replicate seven recent studies finding that “high functioning” autistic individuals (IQ above 70) have preserved ability to recognize “non-social” expressions in photographs of faces (“social” expressions were defined to be those dependent on social context and meaning such as