Scheuffgen K, Happé F, Anderson M, Frith U
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Department of Psychology, University College London, UK.
Dev Psychopathol. 2000 Winter;12(1):83-90. doi: 10.1017/s095457940000105x.
The uneven profile of performance on standard assessments of intelligence and the high incidence of savant skills have prompted interest in the nature of intelligence in autism. The present paper reports the first group study of speed of processing in children with autism (IQ 1 SD below average) using an inspection time task. The children with autism showed inspection times as fast as an age-matched group of young normally developing children (IQ 1 SD above average). They were also significantly faster than mentally handicapped children without autism of the same age, even when these groups were pairwise matched on Wechsler IQ. To the extent that IT tasks tap individual differences in basic processing efficiency, children with autism in this study appear to have preserved information processing capacity despite poor measured IQ. These findings have implications for the role of general and specific cognitive systems in knowledge and skill acquisition: far from showing that children with autism are unimpaired, we suggest that our data may demonstrate the vital role of social insight in the development of manifest "intelligence."
在智力标准评估中表现的不均衡以及学者技能的高发生率引发了对自闭症患者智力本质的兴趣。本文报告了第一项针对自闭症儿童（智商低于平均水平1个标准差）处理速度的群体研究，采用了检查时间任务。自闭症儿童的检查时间与年龄匹配的正常发育儿童组（智商高于平均水平1个标准差）一样快。他们也比同龄的无自闭症智力障碍儿童明显更快，即使这些组在韦氏智商上进行了两两匹配。就检查时间任务能够反映基本处理效率的个体差异而言，本研究中的自闭症儿童尽管测得智商较低，但似乎保留了信息处理能力。这些发现对一般和特定认知系统在知识和技能获取中的作用具有启示意义：我们的研究结果远非表明自闭症儿童未受损，相反，我们认为这些数据可能证明了社会洞察力在明显“智力”发展中的重要作用。
