The Cognitive Flexibility And Processing Traits Of Children With Autism: Behavior And ERP Studies

Cognitive flexibility means that people transform among different thoughts and behaviors;when people under different requirements of situations.After people percept changes of outside;the accommodative effect play the role;meanwhile;it plays role in the cognitive ability;planning;executive function and many other aspects.The trait of cognitive flexibility also is one of the mos t directly essential factor in the Theory of Mind;which means understand others' minds;concepts and so on.Many kinds of studies verified that pre-frontal areas;fusiform gyrus and many other regions;which are related with advanced cognition;were lesion in children with autism.Children with autism can not understand others' awareness;conception and mental status;and they are indifferent to external stimuli;less curious and low tolerate to changes.All of these reflect their repetitive and stereotype traits and low cognitive flexibility.Our researches studied about the abnormal mental processing and specific traits of each processing steps of children with autism by behavioral study and ERP study.The experiment 1 aimed to study about the traits of reversal ability of cognitive flexibility and processing mechanism of children with autism.There were 30 typical developing children with 26 male children and 4 female children;and 27 autistic children with 23 male children and 4 female children.They were assigned as typical developing(control)group and autism group;both groups were age matched.Let all participants to give feedback of complex ambiguous pictures after seeing them.The reaction time;the types of the first feedback;the quantities of whole and detailed contents and the content of single kind of feedback were analyzed.The results showed there were no signif icant differences between two groups on the trend of processing stimuli;when they watched and understood these pictures at first gaze;and all of them pay attention to the whole part at first.Children with autism paid more attention to the detailed and local parts;but they were difficult to integrate and understand them reasonable,and the quantity of this part was signif icant higher than typical developing group.Autistic children paid signif icant more attention to the whole part;but the mental reversal ability could not be applied well.Autistic children were top-down like typical developing children.All results suggest that children with autism are top-down to process stimuli;which is similar with typical developing children;and they pay more attention to the details than typical developing children;but they can not explain the information reasonably;so autistic children have weak cognitive flexibility and difficulty to apply reversal ability.The experiment 2 is an ERP study which aimed to study about the neuron system of processing to the changed stimuli and normal stimuli of children.There were male 17 typical developing children and 18 autistic children with 16 male children and 2 female children.They were assigned as typical developing(control)group and autism group also;both groups were age matched.The experimental materials were standard stimuli;deviant stimuli and novel stimuli.Standard stimuli were the photos of normal fruit and vegetables;deviant stimuli were the cartoon pictures of normal fruit and vegetables;and the novel stimuli were the pictures of fruit and vegetables with changed attribute;such as blue watermelon and so on.This was a totally passive study without requirement of operation.The EEG data were collected during procedure.ERP data showed that the amplitudes of all kinds of stimuli of autism group were significant higher than typical developing group of P100;the latencies of autism group were signif icant longer than typical developing group of N100.There was significant Group main effect of the P300 amplitudes;the amplitudes of MMN in ASD group were significant lower than TD group.To the novel stimuli;the latencies of N400 of autism group were significant longer than typical developing children,and there was a significant Group main effect of N400 amplitude.All results suggest that children with autism needs more time and attention resources to process stimuli at early stage.At later processing stage;children with autism spilt the semantic and image traits of stimuli to process these pictures to understand their novel traits;even they alert to the novel stimuli and they are slower than TD children.What's more,the abilities of automatic detection and maintaining attention in autism are weaker than TD children.Our research investigated the cognitive flexibility and processing traits to the changes of children with autism by behavioral and ERP studies.The results suggest that children with autism need more attention resources and time to process the changes with less ability of automatic detection;and they spend more time to alert the novel stimuli and split the semantic information of stimuli which have highly changed level.Children with autism are top-down at first and pay more attention to the details;but the cognitive flexibility is weak.This study helps to explain the specific processing and stages of children with autism.The results have great theoretical and practical impacts.However;there were too many mental factors to be considered;it needs more further studies to explore the issues.