SOCIAL COMPREHENSION IN INFANTILE AUTISM

普及性发育障碍(PDD)是一种严重的 儿童精神障碍，影响到所有发展领域和 导致严重的终生功能障碍。最新理论 关于这些障碍的研究表明社会赤字可能是 主要特征，使其调查成为在 了解病因和干预措施。此外，PDD 儿童是一个异质群体，因此对儿童的调查 临床亚型也是理解进步的关键 这些障碍。拟议中的项目是由 目前的调查人员试图澄清关于 PDD儿童的社会缺陷，目前的项目，两个 确定了PDD儿童的亚型：那些将特定 社会认知缺陷与社会认知障碍 与他们的精神年龄一致；亚型在社会上不同 行为但不是在精神年龄。拟议中的项目将延长 这项关于社会行为之间关系的调查： 和社会认知，并解决其他关键问题，如交叉 PDD社交中的情境变化性和延迟与偏差 行为。 受试者将是目前在研究中登记的40名PDD受试者， 形成纵向样品，以考察其稳定性 社会认知亚型，以及40名新的PDD受试者，形成了 交叉验证样本。对照组将有80名儿童进行匹配 心理年龄和智商，以及40名正常儿童的社会化匹配 年龄。受试者将被给予一系列标准化的 神经心理测试，一系列社会认知测试 由研究人员开发的，以及一套观察性和 社会行为的访谈测量源自 发育、灵长类、临床文献。中的行为 社会倡议、反应、关注和情感意愿的领域 被研究。数据分析将重点放在以下关系上 社会认知和社会行为对临床的影响 PDD组内的亚型，以及对社会的比较 PDD组和对照组的认知和社会行为。

Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) are a spectrum of serious disorders of childhood, affecting all areas of development and leading to severe lifelong functional impairment. Recent theory about these disorders suggests that the social deficit may be a primary feature, making its investigation central to progress in understanding etiology and intervention. Furthermore, the PDD children are a heterogeneous group, so that investigation of clinical subtypes is also a key to progress in understanding these disorders. The proposed project is one of a series by the present investigator which attempt to elucidate key questions about the social deficit in PDD children, the current project, two subtypes of PDD children are identified: those will specific social-cognative deficits and those whose social cognition is consonant with their mental age; the subtypes differed in social behavior but not in mental age. The proposed project will extend this investigation of the relationship between social behavior: and social cognition, and address other key issues, such as cross- situational variability and delay vs. deviance, in PDD social behavior. Subjects will be 40 PDD subjects currently enrolled in the study, forming a longitudinal sample, to investigate the stability of the social-cognitive subtypes, and 40 new PDD subjects, forming a cross-validation sample. Controls will be 80 children matched for mental age and IQ, and 40 normal children matched for Socialization Age. Subjects will be given a battery of standardized neuropsychological tests, a battery of social cognitive tests developed by the investigators, and a set of observational and interview measures of social behavior derived from the developmental, primate, clinical literatures. Behavior in the areas of social initiations, responses, attention, and affect will be studied. Data analysis will focus on the relationships between aspects of social cognition and social behavior, on clinical subtypes within the PDD groups, and on comparisons of social cognition and social behavior in the PDD and control groups.