Visual Attention Preference for Intermediate Predictability in Young Children

How do children allocate their attention? There is too much information in the world to encode it all, so children must pick and choose. How do they organize their sampling to make the most of the learning opportunities that surround them? Previous work shows infants actively seek intermediately predictable information. Here we employ eye-tracking and computational modeling to examine the impact of stimulus predictability across early childhood (ages 3–6 years, n = 72, predominantly Non-Hispanic White, middle- to upper-middle-income), by chronological age and cognitive ability. Results indicated that children prefer attending to stimuli of intermediate predictability, with no differences in this pattern based on age or cognitive ability. The consistency may suggest a robust general information-processing mechanism that operates across the lifespan.     

Imitation and Pantomime in High-Functioning Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders

A study was designed to test 2 alternative hypotheses—a symbolic hypothesis and an executive function hypothesis—for the imitation and pantomime deficits found in previous studies of autism. The subjects were 17 adolescent high-functioning subjects with autism spectrum disorders and 15 clinical comparison subjects who were matched on chronological age and verbal IQ. Meaning and sequence were manipulated in facial and manual imitation tasks. Sequence was manipulated in the pantomime and control tasks. Recognition memory and motor control tasks were matched to the experimental tasks. The results provided no support for the symbolic deficit hypothesis; meaning aided rather than hindered the performance of the group with autism. Partial support for the executive deficit hypothesis was found. There were no group differences on motor control tasks, and few on the memory control tasks, arguing against deficits in motor initiation, basic motor coordination, or visual recognition memory.     

Intact and Impaired Memory Functions in Autism

This study examined memory functions in individuals with autism. Based on previous evidence of executive function (EF) deficits, we hypothesized that subjects with autism would demonstrate a pattern of intact and imparred memory functions similar to that found in other groups with EF deficits, such as patients with frontal lobe pathology. We compared the performance of high-functioning children and adolescents with autism (n = 19) and clinical comparison subjects (n = 19) matched on sex, CA, and VIQ on measures of memory and EF. The group with autism performed significantly worse than comparison subjects on measures of temporal order memory, source memory, supraspan free recall, working memory, and EF, but not on short- and long-term recognition, cued recall, or new learning ability, consistent with the predictions of the EF theory. The cognitive measures were significantly more intercorrelated in the autism group than the comparison group, consistent with a limit in central cognition.