López Beatriz, Leekam Susan R, Arts Gerda R J
University of the West of England, UK.
Autism. 2008 Mar;12(2):159-71. doi: 10.1177/1362361307086662.
This study aimed to test the assumption drawn from weak central coherence theory that a central cognitive mechanism is responsible for integrating information at both conceptual and perceptual levels. A visual semantic memory task and a face recognition task measuring use of holistic information were administered to 15 children with autism and 16 typically developing children. If there is a central integration mechanism, performance on the two tasks should be positively associated. No relationship was found, however, between the two abilities in the comparison group and, unexpectedly, a strong significant inverse correlation was found in the autism group. Classification data further confirmed this finding and indicated the possibility of the presence of subgroups in autism. The results add to emerging evidence suggesting that central coherence is not a unitary construct.
本研究旨在检验从弱中央连贯性理论得出的假设，即一种核心认知机制负责在概念和感知层面整合信息。对15名自闭症儿童和16名发育正常的儿童进行了一项视觉语义记忆任务和一项测量整体信息使用情况的人脸识别任务。如果存在中央整合机制，那么这两项任务的表现应该呈正相关。然而，在对照组中未发现这两种能力之间的关系，出乎意料的是，在自闭症组中发现了强烈的显著负相关。分类数据进一步证实了这一发现，并表明自闭症患者中可能存在亚组。这些结果进一步证明了中央连贯性不是一个单一的结构。
