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Autism and Developmental Disorders Colloquium Series

“Understanding assets and deficits in autism spectrum disorders”

Francesca Happe, Ph.D.

Reader in Cognitive Neuroscience

MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London

6:00 p.m., Wednesday, June 13, 2007
MIT Building 46-3002 (auditorium), followed by a reception

Building Address: 43 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA 02139

Hosted by the Brain Development and Disorders Project at MIT

Supported by the Simons Foundation, the Anne and Paul Marcus Family Foundation, and the Autism Treatment Network

Colloquia sponsored by the Autism Consortium

Please RSVP to lmavros@mit.edu

Autism is diagnosed by social-communicative impairments, but is characterized by striking skills that pose a puzzle to deficit theories.  Why do people with autism so often have perfect pitch, remember exact information, and spot tiny details others miss? Can assets in autism be explained by problems in social cognition or executive function? This talk will suggest that there is no single cognitive theory that can explain both social and nonsocial aspects of autism. Indeed, our research on autistic traits in twins suggests that distinct sets of genes operate to influence social, communicative and rigid/obsessive traits.

Unlike deficit accounts of social impairment, the 'weak coherence' account suggests that assets in ASD result from a cognitive style or processing bias towards featural information, perhaps at the expense of configural information. Evidence concerning cognitive style in ASD will be presented, and possible biological bases discussed.