Abstract
Infantile autism is a pervasive developmental disorder characterized by disturbances concerning not only the areas of socialization and communication (“aloneness”) but also the ability to modify and change behavior (“need for sameness”). In most recent studies, various abnormal and deviant cognitive activities, such as the ability to regulate one's behavior, were considered as accounting for these signs. In this report, we examined the regulation of cognitive activity, from a developmental perspective in comparing autistic with mentally retarded children matched in a pairwise manner by global, verbal, and nonverbal developmental ages. All children were tested with tasks adapted from the Object Permanence Test which corresponds to Piaget's sensorimotor development Stages IV to VI. Results showed that autistic children had a pervasive difficulty in maintenance set, made more perseverative errors when the abstraction degree of task was higher, and were more variable in their behavioral strategies. Discussion is focused on the interests and limits of these tasks for the examination of regulation activity from diagnostic and developmental perspectives. Finally, interpretations about recent neuropsychological and neurophysiological works, and additional interdisciplinary studies are suggested.
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The authors gratefully acknowledge the helpful advice and encouragement of G. F. Lelord, E. M. Ornitz, and P. Tanguay. They thank C. Mahé and D. Lioret for their technical assistance with videotapes, G. Couturier and M. Boiron for their cooperation with the examination of children, and S. Roux for her statistical assistance. This study was supported by INSERM Unit 316 “The Nervous System from the Foetus to the Child: Development, Circulation and Metabolism” (L. Pourcelot), Grants C.R.E. INSERM No. 911102 (D. Sauvage) and INSERM Network No. 493001 (C. Barthélémy), convention INSERM—France Telecom 1993. This study could not have been conducted without the contribution of Fondation Langlois.
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Adrien, J.L., Martineau, J., Barthélémy, C. et al. Disorders of regulation of cognitive activity in autistic children. J Autism Dev Disord 25, 249–263 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02179287
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02179287