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Autism and Coherence: A Computational Model
Author(s) -
O’Laughlin Claire,
Thagard Paul
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
mind and language
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.905
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1468-0017
pISSN - 0268-1064
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0017.00140
Subject(s) - connectionism , coherence (philosophical gambling strategy) , autism , cognitive psychology , psychology , computer science , cognition , cognitive science , task (project management) , developmental psychology , neuroscience , mathematics , statistics , management , economics
Recent theorizing about the nature of the cognitive impairment in autism suggests that autistic individuals display abnormally weak central coherence, the capacity to integrate information in order to make sense of one’s environment. Our article shows the relevance of computational models of coherence to the understanding of weak central coherence. Using a theory of coherence as constraint satisfaction, we show how weak coherence can be simulated ina a connectionist network that has unusually high inhibition compared to excitation. This connectionist model simulates autistic behaviour on both the false belief task and the homograph task.