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Identifying Symbolic Relationships in Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Deficit in the Identification of Temporal Co-occurrence?

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Abstract

Individuals with Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) experience difficulties understanding the non-verbal cues conveyed by others that provide symbolic information about relationships between self, other, and environmental events. This study examined whether these difficulties reflect underlying problems in the identification of temporal co-occurrence, or in memorial, associative, or inference skills. The performance of a group of adolescents with ASD was compared to that of typically developing children and adolescents with learning difficulties on four tasks assessing these processes. The ASD group experienced specific difficulties when they were required to identify relationships signalled by the temporal co-occurrence of stimuli. These results are discussed in relation to theories of conceptual deduction in ASD, and a hypothesised role in social cognitive development for attention processes is outlined.

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Notes

  1. The second row formed the basis for a second condition of this experiment, the results of which are not presented here. It had no bearing on the Temporal Inference task condition reported here, and was presented after the data presented here had been collected.

  2. Analysis of the regression slopes did reveal that the assumption of homogeneity was violated in the relationship between RCPM and both the memory span F(2, 45) = 6.19, p = .004, η 2p  = .22, and the total memory trials correct, F(2, 45) = 7.34, p = .002, η 2p  = .25. However, further analysis showed that the inclusion of this covariate did not change the outcome relative to the uncovaried analysis. Hence, both BPVS and Ravens scores are included as covariates throughout in each set of results reported in this paper.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a Medical Research Council (U.K.) PhD Studentship (G78/8079) to the first author, and was conducted in partial fulfilment of her doctoral dissertation. The authors would like to thank staff and children at Fosse Way School, Florence Brown Community School and Sefton Park Infant and Junior Schools for their participation and support. We are grateful to Sarah White and Rhonda Booth for their helpful comments on a previous draft.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

    Catherine S. Ames & Chris Jarrold

  2. Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London, De Crespigny Park, London, SE5 8AF, UK

    Catherine S. Ames

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  1. Catherine S. Ames
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  2. Chris Jarrold
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Correspondence to Catherine S. Ames.

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Ames, C.S., Jarrold, C. Identifying Symbolic Relationships in Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Deficit in the Identification of Temporal Co-occurrence?. J Autism Dev Disord 39, 1723–1734 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-009-0808-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-009-0808-2

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