Minshew N J, Goldstein G, Siegel D J
Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, PA, USA.
J Int Neuropsychol Soc. 1997 Jul;3(4):303-16.
Neurobehavioral theories of autism have hypothesized core deficits in sensory input or perception, basic attentional abilities or generalized attention to extrapersonal space, anterograde memory, auditory information processing, higher order memory abilities, conceptual reasoning abilities, executive function, control mechanisms of attention, and higher order abilities across domains. A neuropsychologic battery designed to investigate these hypotheses was administered to 33 rigorously diagnosed autistic individuals with IQ scores greater than 80, and 33 individually matched normal controls. Stepwise discriminant function was used to define the profile of neuropsychologic functioning across domains. The neuropsychologic profile in these autistic individuals was defined by impairments in skilled motor, complex memory, complex language, and reasoning domains, and by intact or superior performance in the attention, simple memory, simple language, and visual-spatial domains. This profile is not consistent with mental retardation or with a general deficit syndrome, but rather with a selective impairment in complex information processing that does not involve visual-spatial processing. This profile is not consistent with a single primary deficit, but with a multiple primary deficit model in which the deficit pattern within and across domains is reflective of the complexity of the information processing demands. This neuropsychologic profile is furthermore consistent with the neurophysiologic characterization of autism as a late information processing disorder with sparing of early information processing.
自闭症的神经行为理论假设，其核心缺陷存在于感觉输入或感知、基本注意力能力或对个人外部空间的广义注意力、顺行性记忆、听觉信息处理、高阶记忆能力、概念推理能力、执行功能、注意力控制机制以及跨领域的高阶能力等方面。对33名经过严格诊断、智商得分高于80的自闭症个体以及33名个体匹配的正常对照组进行了旨在调查这些假设的神经心理成套测验。采用逐步判别函数来界定跨领域神经心理功能的概况。这些自闭症个体的神经心理概况表现为在精细运动、复杂记忆、复杂语言和推理领域存在损伤，而在注意力、简单记忆、简单语言和视觉空间领域表现完好或优于常人。这一概况与智力迟钝或一般缺陷综合征不符，而是与不涉及视觉空间处理的复杂信息处理中的选择性损伤相符。这一概况并非与单一的主要缺陷相符，而是与多重主要缺陷模型相符，在该模型中，领域内和领域间的缺陷模式反映了信息处理需求的复杂性。此外，这一神经心理概况与将自闭症描述为早期信息处理未受影响的晚期信息处理障碍的神经生理学特征相符。
