Extended knowledge
Autism, also known as autism or autism disorder, is a representative disease of generalized developmental disorder.
The cause of disease
Since the 1960s, there have been different theories about the cause of autism, but there was still no unified theory at the beginning of the 20th century. Among them, in terms of cognitive defects, scholars mostly focus on the explanation of information processing defects, but there are still different assumptions, which can be mainly divided into the following four categories:
1, theory of mind
Baron-Cohen and others put forward in 1995 that autistic people are caused by their lack of understanding of their own and others' psychological state, so they have social obstacles such as being unable to recognize other people's facial expressions, or being unable to convey emotions (but able to understand love and simple emotions), unable to express gestures, unable to understand different information of others, unable to distinguish truth from appearance, unable to imagine or deceive and pretend.
2. Emotional theory
Hobson explained from 1989 to 1993 that autistic people do not have the necessary social experience to develop their cognitive ability of social understanding because they cannot accept or respond to other people's emotional expressions.
This shows the mutual attention and coordination ability and imitation defects of autistic patients, but it can't explain the symptoms such as fragmentary talent, visual advantage and imitation. However, this statement echoes Kenner's statement.
3. Executive function theory
In 1992, Ozonoff thinks that autistic people may be caused by functional damage of prefrontal cortex, so they have symptoms such as rigid behavior, limited expression of interest, clumsy imitation of actions, self-centered social interaction, lack of emotional response, and advanced abstract cognitive defects.
4. Weak theory of central coherence
Sperber and Wilson argued in 1986 that autistic people, because of their own information processing ability, can't convert external environmental stimuli into meaningful information, and then connect old and new information, so they all have fragmentary talents such as being good at arranging and combining building blocks, or excellent mechanical memory.