Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T14:16:37.093Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Other and other waters in the river: Autism and the futility of prediction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2020

Matthew K. Belmonte*
Affiliation:
The Com DEALL Trust, Bangalore560043, India Division of Psychology, Nottingham Trent University, NottinghamNG1 4FQ, UK. [email protected] http://www.mit.edu/~belmonte/

Abstract

Autism has been described as a neural deficit in prediction, people with autism manifest low perceptual construal and are impaired at traversing psychological distances, and Gilead et al.'s hierarchy from iconic to multimodal to fully abstract, socially communicated representations is exactly the hierarchy of representational impairment in autism, making autism a natural behavioural and neurophysiological test case for the prediction–abstraction relationship.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baron-Cohen, S. (1995) Mindblindness: An essay on autism and theory of mind. MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baron-Cohen, S., Ashwin, E., Ashwin, C., Tavassoli, T. & Chakrabarti, B. (2009) Talent in autism: Hypersystemizing, hyper-attention to detail and sensory hypersensitivity. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 364(1522):1377–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beker, S., Foxe, J. J. & Molholm, S. (2018) Ripe for solution: Delayed development of multisensory processing in autism and its remediation. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 84:182–92.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Belmonte, M. K. (2008a) Does the experimental scientist have a ‘theory of mind’? Review of General Psychology 12(2):192204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Belmonte, M. K. (2008b) Human, but more so: What the autistic brain tells us about the process of narrative. In: Autism and representation, ed. Osteen, M., pp. 166–79. Routledge.Google Scholar
Boduroglu, A., Shah, P. & Nisbett, R. E. (2009) Cultural differences in allocation of attention in visual information processing. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 40(3):349–60.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brandwein, A. B., Foxe, J. J., Butler, J. S., Frey, H. P., Bates, J. C., Shulman, L. H. & Molholm, S. (2015) Neurophysiological indices of atypical auditory processing and multisensory integration are associated with symptom severity in autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 45(1):230–44.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brandwein, A. B., Foxe, J. J., Butler, J. S., Russo, N. N., Altschuler, T. S., Gomes, H. & Molholm, S. (2013) The development of multisensory integration in high-functioning autism: High-density electrical mapping and psychophysical measures reveal impairments in the processing of audiovisual inputs. Cerebral Cortex 23(6):1329–41.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Conson, M., Mazzarella, E., Esposito, D., Grossi, D., Marino, N., Massagli, A. & Frolli, A. (2015) “Put myself into your place”: Embodied simulation and perspective taking in autism spectrum disorders. Autism Research 8(4):454–66.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Courchesne, E. & Allen, G. (1997) Prediction and preparation, fundamental functions of the cerebellum. Learning & Memory 4:135.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dumais, K. M., Chernyak, S., Nickerson, L. D. & Janes, A. C. (2018) Sex differences in default mode and dorsal attention network engagement. PLOS ONE 13(6):e0199049.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Feldman, J. I., Dunham, K., Cassidy, M., Wallace, M. T., Liu, Y. & Woynaroski, T. G. (2018) Audiovisual multisensory integration in individuals with autism spectrum disorder: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 95:220–34.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Frith, U. (1989) Autism: Explaining the enigma. Blackwell.Google Scholar
Frith, U. & de Vignemont, F. (2005) Egocentrism, allocentrism, and Asperger syndrome. Consciousness and Cognition 14(4):719–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Frith, U. & Happé, F. (1994) Autism: Beyond “theory of mind.” Cognition 50(1–3):115–32.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gomot, M. & Wicker, B. (2012) A challenging, unpredictable world for people with autism spectrum disorder. International Journal of Psychophysiology 83(2):240–47.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hamilton, A. F., Brindley, R. & Frith, U. (2009) Visual perspective taking impairment in children with autistic spectrum disorder. Cognition 113(1):3744.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hill, E. L. (2004) Executive dysfunction in autism. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8(1):2632.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kennedy, D. P., Redcay, E. & Courchesne, E. (2006) Failing to deactivate: Resting functional abnormalities in autism. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 103(21):8275–80.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kitzbichler, M. G., Khan, S., Ganesan, S., Vangel, M. G., Herbert, M. R., Hämäläinen, M. S. & Kenet, T. (2015) Altered development and multifaceted band-specific abnormalities of resting state networks in autism. Biological Psychiatry 77(9):794804.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lacan, J. (1966) Fonction et champ de la parole et du langage en psychanalyse. In: Écrits, pp 237322. Éditions du Seuil.Google Scholar
Markus, H. R. & Kitayama, S. (1991) Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion and motivation. Psychological Review 98(2):224–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Masuda, T. & Nisbett, R. E. (2006) Culture and change blindness. Cognitive Science 30(2):381–99.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nisbett, R. E. & Masuda, T. (2003) Culture and point of view. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 100(19):11163–70.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ostrolenk, A., Bao, V. A., Mottron, L., Collignon, O. & Bertone, A. (2019) Reduced multisensory facilitation in adolescents and adults on the autism spectrum. Scientific Reports 9(1):11965.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pearson, A., Marsh, L., Hamilton, A. F. & Ropar, D. (2014) Spatial transformations of bodies and objects in adults with autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 44(9):2277–89.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Raichle, M. E. (2015) The brain's default mode network. Annual Review of Neuroscience 38:433–47.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ring, M., Gaigg, S. B., Altgassen, M., Barr, P. & Bowler, D. M. (2018) Allocentric versus egocentric spatial memory in adults with autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 48(6):2101–11.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ryali, S., Supekar, K., Chen, T., Kochalka, J., Cai, W., Nicholas, J., Padmanabhan, A. & Menon, V. (2016) PLOS Computational Biology 12(12):e1005138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shannon, B. J., Raichle, M. E., Snyder, A. Z., Fair, D. A., Mills, K. L., Zhang, D., Bache, K., Calhoun, V. D., Nigg, J. T., Nagel, B. J., Stevens, A. A. & Kiehl, K. A. (2011) Premotor functional connectivity predicts impulsivity in juvenile offenders. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 108(27):11241–45.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Simpson, J. R. Jr., Drevets, W. C., Snyder, A. Z., Gusnard, D. A. & Raichle, M. E. (2001a) Emotion-induced changes in human medial prefrontal cortex: II. During anticipatory anxiety. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 98: 688–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simpson, J. R. Jr., Snyder, A. Z., Gusnard, D. A. & Raichle, M. E. (2001b) Emotion-induced changes in human medial prefrontal cortex: I. During cognitive task performance. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 98: 683–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinha, P., Kjelgaard, M. M., Gandhi, T. K., Tsourides, K., Cardinaux, A. L., Pantazis, D., Diamond, S. P. & Held, R. M. (2014) Autism as a disorder of prediction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 111(42):15220–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, E., Zhang, S. & Bennetto, L. (2017) Temporal synchrony and audiovisual integration of speech and object stimuli in autism. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders 39:1119.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stevenson, R. A., Baum, S. H., Segers, M., Ferber, S., Barense, M. D. & Wallace, M. T. (2017) Multisensory speech perception in autism spectrum disorder: From phoneme to whole-word perception. Autism Research 10(7):1280–90.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Trope, Y. (1989) Levels of inference in dispositional judgement. Social Cognition 7(3):296314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trope, Y. & Liberman, N. (2003) Temporal construal. Psychological Review 110(3):403–21.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Van de Cruys, S., Evers, K., Van der Hallen, R., Van Eylen, L., Boets, B., de-Wit, L. & Wagemans, J. (2014) Precise minds in uncertain worlds: Predictive coding in autism. Psychological Review 121(4):649–75.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Witkin, H. A. (1979) Socialization, culture and ecology in the development of group and sex differences in cognitive style. Human Development 22:358–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Witkin, H. A. & Asch, S. E. (1948) Studies in space orientation; perception of the upright in the absence of a visual field. Journal of Experimental Psychology 38(5):603–14.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Witkin, H. A., Dyk, R. B., Fattuson, H. F., Goodenough, D. R. & Karp, S. A. (1962) Psychological differentiation: Studies of development. Wiley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Witkin, H. A. & Goodenough, D. R. (1977) Field dependence and interpersonal behavior. Psychological Bulletin 84(4):661–89.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baron-Cohen, S., Knickmeyer, R. C. & Belmonte, M. K. (2005) Sex differences in the brain: Implications for explaining autism. Science 310(5749):819–23.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed