Chapter 3 Review Questions

1. A core deficit is typically 1 specific, underlying problem that’s common to everyone with
the same disorder, which could result into varying symptoms. In autism, the core deficit
has varied over the decades. But now theorists have now shifted focus on trying to see if
one deficit precedes all the other deficits. Of course, this is difficult to test, and there has
been no evidence that shows that the pre-existence of one deficit where there may be an
absence of others.
4. ASD is seen as an information processing deficit because typically those who have
autism have their performance decline when doing dual tasks. A dual task in this case is
defined as a task that requires simultaneous processing of 2 types of incoming information.
In the study the books give the example of from (Garcia-Villamisar & Della Sala, 2002)
showed that when the group with autism had to perform task simultaneously, their
performance declined by 40%. Although the tasks where simple the group struggled to do
them at the same time without their performance struggling. This is just one example that
helps show information processing deficit.
8. Central coherence is the brains ability to process multiple chunks of information in a
global way. It works to connect the information and help view them in context, to help
determine a higher level of meaning. Poor central coherence can make it hard to generalize
and to make sense of things, but it can also affect the difficulties with expressions, and motor
skills.
11. The brains of individuals with ASD differ neurotypical individuals in many ways. Some
examples are increased brain activation in word region of the surface gray matter, reduced
brain activation in the surface gray matter are that processes the meaning of sentences,
reduced functional connections or correlations among 10 pairs of cortical regions that
participate in language function, and reduced synchrony between the activity of the region
pairs. Studies have also found that the neural systems of individuals with autism have fewer
and smaller centers to call upon and have less flexibility in doing so.
12. Some alternate strategies used by individuals with autism include, for sentence
comprehension focusing on the words of sentences rather than the meaning of the entire
sentence. When doing tasks involving their working memory the autism group typically
viewed the letters as graphic figures and did not automatically recode them into letter names
like the control group did. The brain activation was in both the posterior and visual areas and
the right executive area. They rely on lower level visual abilities to perform certain tasks.
Many tend to think in visual pictures but not everyone with autism relies on this.
15. One example of the implications of the Brain Basis of Autism is a child being placed in a
class with other children their age because academically they are on the same level, but their
social behavior being of a lower age group. Instead of this being a problem in the classroom
it should be an expected and planned for consequence of the developmental disorder of
autism. Another implication is if an individual is not doing something like following through
on an assignment, this doesn’t mean the are being uncooperative. Typically, people use
executive functions to override our feelings of not wanting to do something. Those with
autism may not have this ability to come to those conclusions. So we must figure out why
they think a specific task is hard and help change the task so they will complete it. The 3rd
implication is making changes to accommodate an individual with autism, because they can
not change the way they think and perceive the world. Autism used to be considered a
psychological problem. Many people believed that it was all in the mind and had no
connection to the brain. Now there is a better understand of the brain-behavior connections in
autism, and more and more people are becoming aware that they can’t change certain aspects
of themselves or how their brains work, so instead we must help make changes so they can
be successful.