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0:00
Greetings. This is
Dr. Stephen Hooper.
I'm a Professor of
Psychiatry, Psychology,
Pediatrics and Education at
the University of North
Carolina School of Medicine.
And I am the Director
of Training at
the Carolina Institute for
Developmental Disabilities
at the University of North
Carolina School of Medicine.
My topic for today will be
neurocognitive models of autism.
0:30
As part of the Distinguished
Lecture Series
on autism and autism
spectrum disorders,
as organized by
Dr. Fred Bockmore.
This lecture will be part of
the neurobiology section.
The neurobiology
section includes
key topics on the
genetics of autism,
brain mechanisms in autism,
neurochemical studies
as well as neurocognitive
theories related to
autism and its
associated features.
This lecture will serve
as a companion to
the other presentations in
the neurobiology section,
with the overall goal
being to compare
and contrast several
of these theories
as they relate to
the developmental
and behavioral
features of autism.
1:17
To date, there have
been a number of
cognitively based
theories that have
attempted to explain
the symptomatology
in autism spectrum disorders.
Some of these have included
the temporal binding
deficit hypothesis
or disconnectivity
in the autism brain.
Others have been more
functionally based,
looking at memory-based
deficits in this population.
Indeed, some of the models
go back over 40 years
to Lovaas' initial stimulus
over selectivity model.
But for this lecture,
I want to focus on three
of the primary theories
that have emerged in the
last several decades,
and these include weak
central coherence,
theory of mind and
executive dysfunction.
As a prelude to discussing
these theories,
I want to spend a
little bit of time
talking about the
overview of a theory.
Then we will examine
the similarities and
differences in these three
different theories for
explaining the core
features of autism and
allow the overview of
the theory discussion to
provide an avenue
for understanding
the clinical utility
of these three
different theories of autism.
