Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Biological Motion Processing In Typical Development And In The Autism Spectrum, Aaron Krakowski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Biological motion (BM) analysis and interpretation is a fundamental process of human neurocognition that has been only minimally explored neurophysiologically. In addition to its importance in understanding the underlying roots and development of social cognition, BM processing is a prime candidate domain for exploring the underlying etiology of social cognitive disorders such as the autism spectrum.

In an initial experiment, typical adults observed BM point-light displays of a human actor (UM) as well as their spatially scrambled counterparts (SM), in both an unattended distractor task as well as an explicit attention task. Results showed a neurophysiological response manifested as three …

Exploring The Role Of Perceived Religiosity On Daily Life, Coping, And Parenting For Jewish Parents Of Children With Autism, Frances Rebecca Victory

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This two-part study (a) explores the multi-dimensional aspects of religious and psychosocial experience of Jewish mothers and fathers with and without a child with autism; and (b) uses a multi-method design to examine the influence of perceived religious beliefs, ritual practices, and community context on daily life, parenting, and coping processes for these parents. The first study included 20 fathers and 34 mothers of typically developing children. Participants were affiliated with Reform, Conservative, and Modern Orthodox Judaism. They completed three online q-sorts and five open-ended questions. The three q-sorts focused on the perceptions of religious beliefs, ritual practices, and community …

The Neurodevelopment Of Basic Sensory Processing And Integration In Autism Spectrum Disorder, Alice Brown Brandwein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis presents three studies that together explore the neurophysiological basis for the sensory processing and integration abnormalities that have been observed in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) since the disorder was first described over half a century ago. In designing these studies we seek to fill a hole that currently exists in the research community‟s knowledge of the neurodevelopment of basic multisensory integration -- both in children with autism and as well as in those with typical development. The first study applied event related potentials (ERPs) and behavioral measures of multisensory integration to a large group of healthy participants ranging …

Idiots Savants, Retarded Savants, Talented Aments, Mono-Savants, Autistic Savants, Just Plain Savants, People With Savant Syndrome, And Autistic People Who Are Good At Things: A View From Disability Studies, Joseph N. Straus

Publications and Research

People identified as idiot savants have long comprised an identifiable group (a high level of skill in the context of perceived mental deficiency) whose story has mostly been told by psychiatrists and psychologists within a medicalized model of disability that assumes deficiency and seeks remediation and normalization. More recently, people identified as savants have become common figures of literary and cinematic representation. Both of these narrative frames have enfreaked them as alien Others, whose gifts and disabilities place them outside the normal run of human intelligence and creativity. With a focus on music, this article tries to see through these …