Ellen Ruskin

Links Between Social Understanding and Social Behavior in Verbally Able Children with Autism

This study investigated the relations between various measures of social understanding and social interaction competence in verbally able children with autism. Measures of social understanding included measures of verbalizable knowledge (false belief understanding, affective perspective taking), as well as measures of more intuitive forms of social responsiveness (empathy, concern to distress, and initiating joint attention). Two measures of social interaction competence were employed: level of engagement with peers on the playground, and prosocial behavior in a structured laboratory task. For children with autism, initiating joint attention and empathy were strongly related to both measures of social interaction competence. No understanding-behavior links were identified for a language-age matched comparison sample of developmentally delayed children. Several accounts of these understanding-behavior links are considered, including the possibility that for children with autism, more impaired forms of understanding are more closely linked to behavior because they serve as limits on competence.

Developmental differences in visual processing: Strategy versus structure

The present study was an examination of two contrasting explanations for the finding that young children tend to classify objects according to similarity relations whereas adults emphasize dimensional structure. Subjects from three different age groups were given tasks that tapped different aspects of the visual process: Feature search, Conjunction search, and Restricted Classification tasks. In addition, three different stimulus objects (a highly separable, a highly integral, and an intermediate dimensional combination) were studied to explore the contribution of stimulus structure in dictating the nature of the processing mode. The results provided evidence against the view that children perceive objects according to a more primitive holistic structure. Rather, the results can be taken with past research to suggest that less efficient visual processing may lead the younger subjects to adopt a classification strategy that emphasizes similarity relations. In addition, the current research supported Garners (1974, The processing of information and structure, Potomac, MD: Erlbaum) suggestion that the nature of the processing mode is stimulus-driven.

Chapter 12 The Development of Attentional Control Mechanisms

Research on the development of selective attention in children has focused on the increased selectivity that children manifest as they grow older. Three studies were conducted to elucidate the contribution of two primary sources of age differences in attentional selectivity: (a) Stimulus factors involve the development of perceptual skills, particularly the skills required for stimulus differentiation. (b) Attentional efficiency involves the efficiency with which specific control mechanisms of selective attention are applied. This efficiency may improve as children have the opportunity to use these skills. The first two studies minimized the role of stimulus factors using stimulus materials and tasks that reduced the demands of stimulus differentiation and processing factors—emphasis was placed on mechanisms of visual attention shifts and deployment. In a third study, the interaction of stimulus factors and attentional efficiency was studied. Results demonstrated that a considerable source of developmental variance is attributable to the continuing development of efficient attentional control mechanisms.