Björne, Balkenius - Autism as an attentional disorder

[gusl]

Björne, P., and Balkenius, C. (2003). Autism as an attentional disorder. In Proceedings of the XIth European Conference on Developmental Psychology. (apparently only the abstract is available)

Abstract

Attention is probably one of the most fundamental abilities for learning. It has been proposed to encompass parts such as disengagement from current focus, orienting to new target, reengagement at the new target, as well as selective and sustained attention. An early attentional deficit will possibly account for many of the impairments associated with autism. Research has not yielded consistent results as to which part of attention is specifically impaired in autism. One way to catch the qualitative attentional impairment is to analyze videotapes of persons with autism performing daily tasks, correlating these results with instruments designed to measure their general cognitive abilities, which display a characteristic, uneven profile. Then it is possible to design experiments that can properly tap the attentional abilities and deficits in persons with autism. We expect to find a deficit in voluntary attentional shift to expected target, perhaps due to a lower level of attentional engagement. We also expect to find difficulties in orienting and reengaging attention, which could in part account for the fragmentized understanding of the world and the difficulties in generalizing knowledge across domains. Besides direct experimental evidence, these hypotheses can be tested in computational simulations of a model of context processing.

Are autists less able to control what they pay attention to? How much autistic behavior is the consequence of being concentrated all the time?

Are autists similar to absent-minded mathematicians who never stop thinking about a problem, but since birth? I can imagine that an attentional problem in early development would be enough to cause most autistic symptoms.

I wonder if teaching math to young children could cause autistic-like behavior. Just imagine their wild imaginations applied to problems in topology...