Definition
Social impairments are among the most recognizable features of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), presenting early in infancy and persisting through the lifespan. Reduced affect recognition and difficulty in predicting thoughts and feelings in others are critical features of ASD – particularly in verbal, cognitively able individuals. Advances in social neuroscience led to identification of key neural networks underlying social cognition with consistent findings of ASD-specific neural responses in regions associated with perception of biological motion, face and emotion recognition, and perspective taking.
The foundation of advanced social cognitive skills such as perspective taking and empathy lie in early social communication behaviors such as imitation and joint attention. Recently, several efficacious interventions have been established for critical early social...
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Burns, A., Soorya, L. (2017). Social Cognitive Interventions. In: Volkmar, F. (eds) Encyclopedia of Autism Spectrum Disorders. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6435-8_102144-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6435-8_102144-1
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