Big heads, small details and autism.
Big heads, small details and autism.
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大头脑、小细节和自闭症。
DOI：
10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2009.01.012
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发表时间：
2009
期刊：
影响因子：
2.6
通讯作者：
White S
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
White S
自闭症被认为与对细节集中处理的偏见有关。虽然认知基础仍然存在争议，但一个强有力的假设是，从局部加工转变为全局加工会产生高加工成本。这种处理方式背后的一个可能的神经机制是异常的神经连接;特别是大脑区域之间的结构或功能连接减少可能导致良好的基于范例的处理，但概括性差。异常的神经连接也被认为是自闭症中大头畸形发病率增加的原因（头部/大脑尺寸增加）。因此，本研究调查了头部大小对自闭症患者在全局和局部处理之间切换的能力的影响。49名7-12岁的高功能自闭症儿童（12名患有大头畸形）与25名正常发育的儿童在局部-全局转换任务中的表现进行了比较。那些患有孤独症的儿童谁也有大头症显示更大的处理成本时切换到全球处理，或“缩小”，比其余的自闭症儿童和控制儿童。第二个实验表明，正常发育的大头畸形与转换到全局处理的困难无关，而是发生在身体庞大的儿童中。因此，自闭症患者的大头畸形可能是神经连接异常和局部处理偏差的生物标志。
Autism is thought to be associated with a bias towards detail-focussed processing. While the cognitive basis remains controversial, one strong hypothesis is that there are high processing costs associated with changing from local into global processing. A possible neural mechanism underlying this processing style is abnormal neural connectivity; specifically reduced structural or functional connectivity between brain regions might lead to good exemplar-based processing but poor generalisation. Abnormal neural connectivity has also been suggested to account for the increased incidence of macrocephaly in autism (increased head/brain size). The present study therefore investigated the effect of head size on the ability to switch between global and local processing in autism. 49 high-functioning 7–12 year olds with autism (12 with macrocephaly) were compared to 25 normally developing children in their performance on a Local-Global Switching task. Those children with autism who also had macrocephaly showed a greater processing cost when switching into global processing, or ‘zooming out’, than both the remaining children with autism and the control children. A second experiment revealed that macrocephaly in the context of normal development is not associated with difficulty switching into global processing but rather occurs in children who are physically large. Macrocephaly in the context of autism may therefore be a biological marker of abnormal neural connectivity, and of a local processing bias.