title: Are abilities abnormally interdependent in children with autism?
abstract: We propose that stronger than usual correlations between abilities indicate which cognitive processes are impaired in autism. Study 1 compared partial correlations (controlling age) between intelligence and social cognition in children with autism (n = 18), mental retardation (MR; n = 34), or no psychological disorder (n = 37). Correlations were stronger in the autism group. Study 2 compared correlations between measures of perceptual organization and verbal comprehension, receptive and expressive language, fine and gross motor coordination, and theory of mind, emotion recognition, and emotion understanding abilities in children with autism (n = 30) or MR (n = 24) and in a large representative sample of children (n = 449). Results indicate that autism is marked by stronger correlations between all ability domains, and MR is marked by stronger correlations between motor coordination tasks and other ability measures.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia. m.dyck@griffith.edu.au
authors.forename: Murray J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Dyck
authors.forename: Jan P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Piek
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hay
authors.forename: Leigh
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: Joachim
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hallmayer
mesh_terms: D000339:Affect; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000453:epidemiology*; D002648:Child; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008607:Intellectual Disability / Q000453:epidemiology; D007360:Intelligence; D008297:Male; D019957:Motor Skills Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010468:Perceptual Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D014796:Visual Perception