**1. Introduction**

104 Current Topics in Children's Learning and Cognition

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A child's cognitive performance can vary considerably from one task context to the next, even when only small details of the task are changed. Such context dependence has given rise to a new way of looking at the underlying processes of children's thinking (e.g. Smith, Thelen, Titzer, & McLin, 1999; Spencer, Thomas, & McClelland, 2009). Rather than attributing performance to a particular competence (or a lack thereof), performance is attributed to a synergy between the actor and environment, highly sensitive to even seemingly irrelevant details of the task context. Though not complete, this view makes it possible to map out how changes in the context could be harnessed to bring about changes in a child's behavior. The current chapter looks at whether the same view can be applied to autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A first step in this direction is to explore the extent to which cognitive performance in ASD is affected by apparently irrelevant variations of the task context.

Autism spectrum disorder comprises of a cluster of disorders that include Autistic Disorder (also known as "classic" autism), Asperger's Syndrome, and Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (DSM-IV-TR; American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Though there are important differences between these sub-groups, they share a common set of general symptoms that arise early in a child's life: ASD is characterized by pronounced social difficulties and communication impairment, along with restricted, repetitive behaviors or interests (APA, 2000). In particular, children often demonstrate atypical eye contact, a lack of verbal speech or atypical language use, odd mannerisms such as arm flapping, and narrow, obsessive interests (e.g.: an encyclopedic knowledge of former U.S. Secretaries of the Interior; Klinger, Dawson, & Renner, 2003).

Importantly, despite extensive research into ASD, no causal factors have been isolated so far. For example, even though the patters of neurological activity show numerous

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differences between typical development and ASD, no single difference appears to capture the disorder (for a review see Fein, 2011). And even though ASD appears to have a strong genetic component, genome variations appear diffuse (e.g., Devlin & Scherer, 2012). This raises the possibility that the disorder is not reducible to a static causal factor that can differentiate between typical development and ASD. Instead, the disorder might be the result of complex interdependence among multiple factors that change each other's effect as they interact over time. Take for example, the language impairments documented in ASD. Rather than being attributed to a stable factor (language-specific, neurological, genetic, or otherwise), these behaviors might have their origin in virtually undetectably minimal discrepancies in how the perceptual system combines information into higher-order patterns. The discrepancy from typical development might be minimal at first, but then get amplified by a variety of child-internal, environmental, and social factors (e.g., a difficulty detecting higher-order patterns, a low tolerance for over-stimulation, the hierarchical order inherent in a language, a disrupted communication synchrony between child and caregiver, etc). The coming-together of environmental factors further intensify the initially minimal difference in perceptual processes – which then in turn amplify environmental and social factors. In other words, what may start out as a barely noticeable difference in how information is integrated might enter a cycle of forces that amplify each other's effect over time, an interdependence that heralds a major departure from typical development.

Beyond the Black-and-White of Autism: How Cognitive Performance Varies with Context 107

differences between ASD and typical development, and interdependence view advocates the study of trajectories, the stability of trajectories, and how stable cycles can be perturbed. Furthermore, an interdependence view implies that even small changes in the context can potentially have a large effect on behavioral outcomes. In the remainder of the chapter, we review performance variability of already published research to describe such context dependence in cognitive tasks. As such, this review differs from already existing reviews (e.g., Klinger, Dawson, & Renner, 2003; Rajendran & Mitchell, 2007) in one crucial way. Rather than emphasizing consistencies in findings to promote the idea of a stable difference in ASD (and discussing conflicting findings to undermine one over another reductionist

The chapter is organized as follows: we will first highlight some findings in pattern perception, a large research field centered on the idea of the so-called weak central coherence (cf., Frith, 1989). We will then turn to findings related to learning, focusing specifically on learning of higher-order patterns and statistical information in sequences. Next, we will discuss ASD research on executive functioning, the child's ability to control their actions to achieve a certain outcome. Finally, we will turn to research on social

Perceiving meaningful configurations in the array of ever-changing information (visual or otherwise) requires the mind to combine separate bursts of sensation into an organized unit of perception. The mind has to detect or impose coherence (cf., Thagard, 1989) For example, in order to perceive a painting, the mind has to ignore the individual pixels of color and detect the higher-order organization of objects and scenes. The possible patterns of organization are nested hierarchically, ranging from a very local organization (e.g., an individual object in the painting) to a more global organization (e.g., the theme of the painting). The ability to detect patterns of organization at various levels of abstraction is commonly studied under the framework of local versus global perception, with the central question pertaining to the degree to which local and global perception interfere with one another (cf. e.g., Baylis & Driver, 1993; Herrmann & Bosch, 2001; Humphreys, Olson, Romani, & Riddoch, 1996; Kahneman & Henik, 1981; Kahneman & Treisman, 1984; Kimchi, 1992; Kramer & Jacobson, 1991; Maurer, Le Grand, & Mondloch, 2002; Moore & Egeth, 1997;

An essential difference between ASD and typical development is the degree to which the perception of global order interferes with the perception of local order. Rather than exhibiting a bias towards coherence, perception of individuals with ASD is typically characterized by what is known as weak central coherence. Best example of this difference was established with the classical Navon task, a task in which stimuli consist of many small letters configured in the arrangement of a large letter (cf., Navon, 1977). In typical development, results show a distinct interference of large letters on the perception of small letters, both in children (Ozonoff Strayer, McMahon & Filloux 1994; Plaisted, Swettenham,

ASD theory), our goal is to highlight context effects detected in ASD research.

reasoning, discussing findings in joint attention and theory of mind.

**2. Perception** 

Pellicano & Rhodes, 2003).

The view that ASD behavior is the result of interdependent factors that amplify each other's effects over time is a stark departure from the view that overt behavior is reducible to a stable factor that marks autism. And while there is no conclusive evidence to support the former view, there is nevertheless strong support in the developmental literature of ASD. First, it is difficult to predict the developmental trajectories of individual children (for a review, see Seltzer, Shattuck, Abbeduto & Greenberg, 2004). For example, while overall language abilities can improve over time (Sigman & McGovern, 2005), various atypicalities sometimes remain, including echolalia or fixations on various topics of interest (Lord, Rici, & Pickles, 2004). Some children may even exhibit an increase in general symptom severity over time (e.g., Nordin & Gillberg, 1998).

Second, developmental patterns tracked over time sometimes show a non-linear trajectory. For example, differences in social behavior (e.g. eye contact, visual tracking, visual disengagement, imitation, social interest, and sensory-motor behaviors), apparent at 12 months of age, are missing in younger children (Zwaigenbaum et al., 2005; Bryson , Brian, Roberts, Szatmari, Rombough, & McDermott 2007). And while 6-month-old infants with a high risk of autism show less frontal Gamma power than low-risk children, this difference is negligible when infants are 24 months old (Keehn, Luyster, Vogel-Farley, Tager-Flusberg & Nelson, 2012). Explaining such non-linear trajectories under the reductionist viewpoint would require an additional assumption, namely that the isolated causal factor comes online at a certain point in time. These trajectories imply instead that the disorder has to be attributed to complex interactions among factors that change in nature over time.

The interdependence view on ASD has strong implications for how to go about studying the source of this disorder and its treatment. Rather than looking for black-and-white differences between ASD and typical development, and interdependence view advocates the study of trajectories, the stability of trajectories, and how stable cycles can be perturbed. Furthermore, an interdependence view implies that even small changes in the context can potentially have a large effect on behavioral outcomes. In the remainder of the chapter, we review performance variability of already published research to describe such context dependence in cognitive tasks. As such, this review differs from already existing reviews (e.g., Klinger, Dawson, & Renner, 2003; Rajendran & Mitchell, 2007) in one crucial way. Rather than emphasizing consistencies in findings to promote the idea of a stable difference in ASD (and discussing conflicting findings to undermine one over another reductionist ASD theory), our goal is to highlight context effects detected in ASD research.

The chapter is organized as follows: we will first highlight some findings in pattern perception, a large research field centered on the idea of the so-called weak central coherence (cf., Frith, 1989). We will then turn to findings related to learning, focusing specifically on learning of higher-order patterns and statistical information in sequences. Next, we will discuss ASD research on executive functioning, the child's ability to control their actions to achieve a certain outcome. Finally, we will turn to research on social reasoning, discussing findings in joint attention and theory of mind.
