Atypical Development

Atypical Development

1. The importance of studying atypical development for understanding cognitive development: The example of theory of mind

2. The importance of studying development from a developmental perspective

3. How can the study of atypical development help us to understand typical development?

   • Theory of Mind
     • The ability to understand our own and other's mental states
     • The ability to predict and explain other's behaviour on the bias of mental states- empathy and deception
     • Main theoretical asssumption: It is called theory because resembles theories in that we can make hypothesis and predictions of others' behaviour.
     • First study was conducted in 1983 by Wimmer and Pener : Maxi and chocolate task
     • Baron-Cohen, Leslie & Frith (1985): Does the autistic child have a Theory of Mind?
       • They concluded that ToM is impaired in autism and independent from IQ and language: Later research shows they are closely linked
         • Autism: Triad of impairments Wing & Gould (1979)
           • Social interaction difficulty: Eye contact, Joint attention (e.g., Pointing, showing), social and emotional reciprocity (e.g., Turn taking, comfort seeking).
           • Restricted imagination and repetitive behaviours and restricted interests: Lack or repetitive pretend play, routines (objects, space and time), repetitive motor mannerisms
           • Language and communication impairment: When there is verbal language, they tend to communicate own needs, one sided conversations, pronoun reversal
             • children with ASD have less attention and cognitive terms; this ability seems to be linked with ToM
               • The mother's mental language is related to child's ToM development
             • Language requires the understand of the knowledge states of others Irony and metaphors (Leekam, 1992, 1993)
         • Joint Attention
           • To display joint attention it is necessary to understand attentional states (primitive/external version of mental states) (Gomez, López & López , 1994)
             • Autism: Protodeclaratives: Showing behaviours very rare (i.e., pointing) (Baron-Cohen, 1989b). Protoimperatives: Requests made by means of non-verbal communication appear usually without eye-contact and without pointing gestures
             • Symbolic play (Leslie, 1987): children with autism does not produce pretend play and if they do, it is sterotyped and repetitive
               • Pretend play is the ability to put representationss 'on hold' (e.g. meta-representation)

4. The ‘modular snapshot’ child (see the slied)

   • modules are the results of development; they are not strictly genetic programmed
     • the attentional bias are predisposed genetically; to guide development
   • Snapshots may lead to inaccurate conclusions regarding presence/absence of impairments