Cognition and Perception Commons^™

Factors Impacting Treatment Decisions In Caregivers Of Autistic Children, Tiffany Harris

Dissertations

Caregivers of autistic children are not only tasked with deciding upon various treatment options for their children’s symptoms but must also navigate the initial crisis that is experienced after receiving a diagnosis of ASD for their children (Blancher, 1984; Ellis, 1989). Leventhal’s Common Sense Model of Self-Regulation (the CSM; Leventhal et al., 1980) is a theoretical framework developed to understand the self-regulatory processes involved in adapting to and managing health threats and posits that cognitive and emotional illness perceptions influence illness outcomes through coping behaviors. This is the first study to examine all major components of the CSM (i.e., cognitive …

Examining Visual Processing Of Hierarchical Figures Through Behavioral Measures And Pupillometry In Relation To Autistic Traits In Adults, Chloe Brittenham

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and autistic traits in the general population are associated with differences in sensory processing, particularly within the visual domain. Previous studies examining global (i.e., overall gist) and local (i.e., detail) visual processing in relation to ASD have sometimes yielded contradictory findings yet converge on a common theme: slowed global processing and increased local bias associated with ASD. Despite this consensus, the mechanism underlying these differences remains unclear, whether it be differences in visual attention, higher or lower visual perception, and/or cognitive style. The use of traditional tasks and stimuli may further complicate the understanding of contributing …

Making Deception Fun: Teaching Autistic Individuals How To Playfriendly Tricks, Adel Naj, Megan St. Clair, Kacie Massoudie, Jonathan Tarbox, Lauri Simchoni, Marianne Jackson, Angela Persicke

Psychology Division Scholarship

Perspective taking is a critical repertoire for navigating social relationships and consists of a variety of complex verbalskills, including socially adaptive forms of deception. Detecting and being able to use socially adaptive deception likelyhas many practical uses, including defending oneself against bullying, telling white lies to avoid hurting others’ feelings,keeping secrets and bluffing during games, and playing friendly tricks on others. Previous research has documented thatsome Autistic1 children have challenges identifying deception and playfully deceiving others (Reinecke et al., 1997). Thecurrent study employed a multiple baseline across participants design to evaluate the use of multiple exemplar training, rules,modeling, practice, and …

How Autism Representation In The Media Influences People's Attitudes: A Literature Review, Eleanor Klein

A with Honors Projects

A literature review of research revealed how media influences attitudes about autistic* people. Several factors lead to negative attitudes: Not emphasizing positive characteristics, emphasizing differences, and portraying autistic people as burdens. Contrasting factors lead to positive attitudes, including: Emphasizing positive characteristics and commonalities, portraying intergroup friendships, giving accurate information about autism, and depicting differences positively. Examples of media are described that are likely to promote negative or positive attitudes towards autistic people. Further research must improve measures of attitudes, determine what autistic people believe is accurate representation, and explore the impact of attitude change based on type of media consumed.

Future Possibilities For Adults With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Nicolas Leonardi

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Autism Spectrum Disorder’s nature of presenting socially awkward behaviors creates barriers for those with ASD in the job interview process. This problem raises questions on how the interview process can be redefined to be more inclusive. Dillenburger et al. conducted a study on interventions provided for individuals with ASD. The study concluded that most jobs do not provide an appropriate job interview process for those with ASD. Solomon et al. and Maras et al. both conducted studies that highlighted the social behaviors presented by individuals with ASD that prevented them from being hired during the job interview process. Both of …

An Evaluation Of An Application Designed For The Ipad® To Measure Stimulus Overselectivity For Future Use In Autism Research, Adrienne A. Fitzer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Twenty-three college students participated in two studies evaluating an application designed to measure stimulus overselectivity in pictures depicting facial affect. We analyzed whether this application worked as designed by evaluating whether it could provide a robust analysis of the types of errors users make (e.g., by matching by the top features, the bottom features, or not by the top or the bottom features), and the extent to which the application worked to decrease selective responding in the event a user was not matching consistently by all features. We also evaluated if participant scores on the Autism Quotient and RAADS-14 could …

Searching For Neural Mechanisms Of Social Cognition, Chandler Siemonsma, Cristina Uribe, Louanne Boyd, Aaron Schurger, Deanna Hughes, Tian Lan

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Social cognition involves the integration and pruning of perceptual information which leads to the formation of an abstract representation, which is also known as the perceptual gist. This study examined 87 differences in visual perception of Mooney face stimuli of differing sizes and the relationship to gist formation in ten individuals with autism compared to neurotypical controls. Parents of both groups completed the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS-2) to assess social functioning in real-world scenarios.

Combining Eye Tracking And Verbal Response To Understand The Impact Of A Global Filter, Franceli L. Cibrian, Jazette Johnson, Viseth Sean, Hollis Pass, Louanne Boyd

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

Visual attention guides the integration of two streams: the global, that rapidly processes the scene; and the local, that processes details. For people with autism, the integration of these two streams can be disrupted by the tendency to privilege details (local processing) instead of seeing the big picture (global processing). Consequently, people with autism may struggle with typical visual attention, evidenced by their verbal description of local features when asked to describe overall scenes. This paper aims to explore how one adult with autism see and understand the global filter of natural scenes.

De Novo Frameshift Variants In The Neuronal Splicing Factor Nova2 Result In A Common C-Terminal Extension And Cause A Severe Form Of Neurodevelopmental Disorder, Francesca Mattioli, Gaelle Hayot, Nathalie Drouot, Bertrand Isidor, Jérémie Courraud, Maria-Victoria Hinckelmann, Frederic Tran Mau-Them, Chantal Sellier, Alica Goldman, Aida Telegrafi, Alicia Boughton, Candace Gamble, Sebastien Moutton, Angélique Quartier, Nolwenn Jean, Paul Van Ness, Sarah Grotto, Sophie Nambot, Ganka Douglas, Yue Cindy Si, Jamel Chelly, Zohra Shad, Elisabeth Kaplan, Richard Dineen, Christelle Golzio, Nicolas Charlet-Berguerand, Jean-Louis Mandel, Amélie Piton

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

The neuro-oncological ventral antigen 2 (NOVA2) protein is a major factor regulating neuron-specific alternative splicing (AS), previously associated with an acquired neurologic condition, the paraneoplastic opsoclonus-myoclonus ataxia (POMA). We report here six individuals with de novo frameshift variants in NOVA2 affected with a severe neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by intellectual disability (ID), motor and speech delay, autistic features, hypotonia, feeding difficulties, spasticity or ataxic gait, and abnormal brain MRI. The six variants lead to the same reading frame, adding a common proline rich C-terminal part instead of the last KH RNA binding domain. We detected 41 genes differentially spliced after NOVA2 …

Retrieval-Induced Forgetting In Autism Spectrum: Combining Narrative Experience With Clinical Research To Explore Stress-Induced, Transitory Retrograde Amnesia, Elizabeth Willsmore-Finkle

Scripps Senior Theses

Currently, psychological research explores autism, a blanket term for a range of neurobiological and developmental differences, through a clinical, as opposed to an experiential, lens. Autism has only existed as formal diagnosis under that name since 1943 (Kanner); however, the advocacy of activists such as Temple Grandin, a slaughterhouse systems designer best known for documenting her life with autism in a series of autobiographic accounts, has begun to legitimize the incorporation of emic experiences of autism within clinical research. Researcher Dermot Bowler and colleagues (2011) have conducted extensive reviews of memory distinctions in autism, finding differences of varying degrees across …

Increasing Waiting And Turn-Taking Among Preschool Aged Children With A Verbal-Delay Diagnosis, Alexa Hill

Honors Theses

The goal of this thesis was to create and implement an intervention that used errorless teaching and focused on increasing a sharing and waiting response for a student who had a verbal delay diagnosis. The two students involved in the project were both two-year-olds who attended an early childhood special education (ECSE) classroom with other preschool-aged children who had similar diagnoses. A single-subject simple baseline design was used and involved several phases designed with multiple responses to show the effectiveness of icons to facilitate sharing among two non-verbal students. Each response was prompted (when necessary) and they were all reinforced …

Teaching Children Who Have Difficulty Mastering Auditory Discriminations, Sarah Lichtenberger

Dissertations

Simple and conditional visual and auditory discrimination repertoires are critical components of many skills necessary for daily functioning, including communication, academic, and daily-living skills (Green, 2001). When auditory discrimination is not under instructional stimulus control, it can result in delayed acquisition of new skills and limit academic progress. The purpose of this study was to teach auditory discrimination to children with autism who had little to no progress on classroom procedures that required auditory discrimination, such as selecting an object from an array when given the name of the object as the direction. Auditory discrimination was taught starting with teaching …

Increasing Vocal Behavior And Establishing Echoic Stimulus Control In Children With Autism, Joseph Shane

Dissertations

Many children with autism fail to demonstrate vocal-verbal behavior, including echoic behavior, as early as their typically developing peers. Some also make very limited vocal sounds in general, remaining mostly mute aside from crying or engaging in stereotypy. Echoic behavior involves auditory discrimination and matching, and functions as a beneficial, if not necessary, prerequisite for many other vocal-verbal skills. The purpose of this study was to develop and implement an echoic training procedure for primarily non-vocal children who did not demonstrate auditory discrimination in baseline. The intervention consisted initially of sessions in which any vocal sounds were reinforced. Then differential …

Parents And Teachers’ Perceptions And Clinical Diagnosis Of Autism Among White And Non-White Groups, Margaret Gopaul

School of Psychology Publications

The pervasiveness of autism has significantly increased over the past 2 decades with the 2014 Center for Disease Control and Prevention report indicating 1 in 68 children are diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Early intervention is recommended as the most effective treatment approach. Nevertheless, previous research has indicated that White children are diagnosed with ASD about 1.5 years earlier than are Non-White children. A current gap remains in literature regarding ASD and different racial groups, and evidence has been inconclusive regarding disparities in identifying and diagnosing ASD. To fill this gap, this study investigated the relationship between child race, …

Parents And Teachers’ Perceptions And Clinical Diagnosis Of Autism Among White And Non-White Groups, Margaret Gopaul

Walden Faculty and Staff Publications

The pervasiveness of autism has significantly increased over the past 2 decades with the 2014 Center for Disease Control and Prevention report indicating 1 in 68 children are diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Early intervention is recommended as the most effective treatment approach. Nevertheless, previous research has indicated that White children are diagnosed with ASD about 1.5 years earlier than are Non-White children. A current gap remains in literature regarding ASD and different racial groups, and evidence has been inconclusive regarding disparities in identifying and diagnosing ASD. To fill this gap, this study investigated the relationship between child race, …

Title: Parents And Teachers’ Perceptions And Clinical Diagnosis Of Autism Among White And Non-White Groups, Margaret Gopaul

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The pervasiveness of autism has significantly increased over the past 2 decades with the 2014 Center for Disease Control and Prevention report indicating 1 in 68 children are diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Early intervention is recommended as the most effective treatment approach. Nevertheless, previous research has indicated that White children are diagnosed with ASD about 1.5 years earlier than are Non-White children. A current gap remains in literature regarding ASD and different racial groups, and evidence has been inconclusive regarding disparities in identifying and diagnosing ASD. To fill this gap, this study investigated the relationship between child race, …

Motivation In Athletes With And Without Autism Spectrum Disorder: Sq, Eq And Aq Relationships To Preferred Feedback, Julia C. Harreschou

Scripps Senior Theses

All athletes are driven by motivation, sources or reasons to push their bodies to their limits and continue to do so regularly. There have been several studies concerning motivation in typical athletes, and many regarding social motivation in people with High Functioning Autism (HFA), however most have been limited to children, and there have been no investigations into HFA athletes’ motivation. The current study looks into the role of social dimensions in athletics, and tests how one’s gender and placement on the Empathy Questionnaire (EQ), Systemizing Questionnaire (SQ), and on the Autism Questionnaire (AQ) affect intrinsic motivation in athletics. It …

Joint Attention In Young Children With Autism, Sabrina Jara

Honors Scholar Theses

Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are classified as pervasive developmental disorders characterized by social, communicative, and behavioral impairments. According to formal and informal reports, children with ASD present with receptive and expressive language delay. Joint attention (JA: the behavior that occurs when two individuals focus on the same object or event) has been identified as a possible marker of delayed language development in children with ASD. In this study, the JA behaviors in children with ASD were contrasted with initially language-matched typically developing (TYP) children across three visits.

Measures of language, the frequency, duration, and source of initiation of JA episodes, …

An Investigation Of The Consistency Of Stimulus Overselection Of Autistic Children, Patricia O'Meara Walker

Dissertations and Theses

A review of the literature indicated that not all of the research in the area of overselectivity of autistic children has been in agreement. It does seem evident that some autistic children overselect. This could be the result of an attentional factor or a modality preference. This has important implications for the education of autistic children. In the light of the inconsistency of autistic children's reactions to sensory stimuli this investigator believed there was a need to determine if overselection is consistent before referring to the overselected modality as a preferred modality or comparing overselected modalities with the child's mode …