ASC Perception as Neurology

Baron-Cohen’s (1995, 2000 and 2012) theory of mind (ToM) recognises the ability of individuals to attribute mental states, beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, and knowledge, to oneself and others, and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one’s own. Baron-Cohen (1995, p.112) further states: ‘It has also been described as “mind reading” or “mind blindness” or, colloquially a difficulty in

‘putting oneself in other people’s shoes’.’ Baron-Cohen (1995) recognises that ToM is

‘absent’ in those with ASC. In a later paper, Baron-Cohen (1997) relates EF to the

prefrontal cortex. Updating his theory, Baron-Cohen (2012) surveyed his ToM work over the period 1985 to 2012. In this published work, Baron-Cohen (2012, p.530) states that ToM ‘seems to be a core and possibly universal abnormality’ in people who are within the ASC.

Baron-Cohen (1997, p.15) refers to ‘executive dysfunction’ or poor EF in people who have ASC. As mentioned in Chapter 1 p.17, Pennington et al. (1991, p.131) define EF as

‘goal-directed behaviour, including planning, organized search, and impulse control’.

Pellicano (2010, p.531) suggests an interdependent relationship between EF and ToM:

The most straightforward explanation of this association (between Executive function (EF) and ToM is that false-belief tasks used to index ToM impose executive demands and hence, EF affects the expression of ToM... that in children with autism, as in typically developing children, a certain level of executive control is critical for the emergence of ToM. (Pellicano, 2010, p.531)

Ozonoff et al. (2002, p.186) suggest that limited concepts of inner models of reality in the person with ASC are paralleled with weak EF, and argue that this can be enhanced, or processed through visual learning, stating that: ‘Children and adolescents with ASC are

54 often visual learners.’ Tager-Flusberg (2007, p.311) asks the question: ‘Do deficits in theory of mind account for the major impairments that characterize autistic disorder?’

This concept further elaborates Frith and Happe’s (1989, p.25) suggestion that people who have autism ‘acquire ToM abilities using intelligence and experience rather than

intuition’. Bowler’s (2007, p.67) notion, that people ‘with autism lack a capacity to perceive other people as persons’ and that other people ‘can think thoughts that are different from reality’, opens up the debate that ToM and EF can be difference and not dysfunction. Frith and Happe (1989, p.25) further suggest that aspects of ASC functioning cannot be explained by ToM alone and as briefly outlined in chapter one p.17 Central Coherance (CC), defined by Peeters and Gillberg (1999) as the ‘drive to piece things together’, can be further described as: ‘The tendency to draw together diverse information to construct higher-level meaning in context’. Frith and Happe (1989, p.25)

Frith and Happe (2006, p.5) update their original description of CC as a ‘core deficit in central processing’ (Frith and Happe, 1989, p.25); they now describe CC as a ‘processing bias’ or ‘cognitive style’. They further comment that weak CC is now being understood as a superiority in local processing rather than a deficit in global processing (Frith and Happe, 2006). Funahashi and Andreau (2013, p.472) describe the connection between EF and the prefrontal cortex as ‘top-down signalling’: they suggest that the prefrontal cortex monitors, controls and supervises the ‘activities in other cortical and subcortical

structures’. This implies that the prefrontal cortex has a classifying or filtering effect upon raw sensate data.

Saxe (2006) discusses the neural basis of social cognition and ToM and how triadic

relationships between parts of the whole of the prefrontal cortex distinguish ToM concepts of Me, You and This. What emerges from the findings of Funahashi and Andreau (2013) and Saxe (2006) is that differences in the neural processing in the ASC prefrontal cortex affect social differences between ASC and NT processing and have a bearing on how differences in CC, EF, and ToM in ASC perception are viewed.

No part of the ‘the medial prefrontal cortex’ (MPFC) is specifically recruited for reasoning about representational mental states; instead, sub-regions of MPFC are implicated in distinct components of social cognition. Ventral MPFC is implicated in

55 emotional perspective taking and sympathy. Dorsal MPFC is implicated in

representing shared or collaborative attention and goals; that is, Deletetriadic relations between Me, You, and This. (Saxe, 2006, p.236)

I suggest there is a correlation between ToM, CC, and EF which can be paralleled with neural functions and subsequent processing. Pellicano (2010, p.531) suggests that there is an interrelation between ToM, EF and CC, stating that: ‘weak CC might have damaging effects on ToM in children with autism’, which links to Baron-Cohen’s (1997) comments on weak CC affecting EF and ToM. This suggests a reciprocity of neural activity (NT) between EF and ToM in their mutual development, where CC regulates perceptive bias towards EF and ToM development. As Saxe (2006) has pointed out, the relationship or neural firing in and across the prefrontal cortex has influence on human social cognition and shared or collaborative attention and goals, which can be interpreted as the

interrelation between ToM and EF. Both Frith and Happe (2006) and Pellicano (2010) posit that the ability to piece things together, as variable (weak or strong) CC, changes the function and perception of ToM. As Bogdashina’s (2010, p.53-60) notions of ‘ASC sensory gating deficit’ andGrandin’s (2006, p.67) ‘NT inattentional blindness’ suggest, for the person with ASC, the ability to filter out much of the primary cortex sensate experience is weak; for the person with ASC, remaining in primary cortex processing and perceiving is their usual world view. This may explain how a variable CC can shift the influence of EF as goal-directed behaviour, i.e. the filtering out of what might be

emergent as sensate experience. Pellicano (2010) highlights that NT functioning relies on global CC in correlation with EF filtering, forming ToM and hypothetical predicted outcomes.

Conversely, Frith and Happe’s (2006) aforementioned ASC processing of seeing things in detail through local CC forms the understanding that differences between ASC and NT processing of sensate material have different values and meanings, dependent on how they are perceived. Baggs (2007), a person with autism, in her YouTube film ‘In My

Language’, describes her thinking thus:

The way I naturally think and respond to things looks and feels so different from standard concepts or even visualization that some people do not consider it thought at

56 all but it is a way of thinking in its own right. However, the thinking of people like me (with ASC) is only taken seriously if we learn your language no matter how we previously thought or interacted. (Baggs, 2007)

Baggs’ (2007) film shows her in relation with her environment; ‘an ongoing response to what is around me’ might be explained as weak or local CC and an unfiltered EF

response. This suggests that Baggs’ (2007) language is a reciprocal relationship with her environment through her sensate experiences, without reconfiguring or filtering into designing words or even visual symbols through goal-orientated EF. This evidences that inclusive steps to redress the differences in NT and ASC perceptual needs are needed. I suggest that ways of accessing the sensate experience accessed by both ASC and NT perception in the primary cortex may form pedagogies accessible to both ASC and NT people.