The cognitive style known as central coherence is receiving increased attention across a variety of clinical neuroscience disorders. I had not been familiar with this concept of central coherence. Essentially, central coherence describes a style of thinking on a spectrum. On one end of the spectrum, you have individuals who tend to think globally or using a gestalt perspective. The big picture is seen rather than paying attention to details. The other end of spectrum includes individuals who are detail-oriented. Their perspective bias is to focus on details.Being on either extreme of the spectrum can produces problems. Very high central coherence can lead to problems with missing important details that need attention or action. Those with very low or weak central coherence can be detail bound, losing sight of important global interpretations of the situation or environment. The imaging correlates of coherence are being explored. Higher central coherence appears to involve increased right and left brain activation with problem-solving. Weak central coherence has been accompanied by less bilateral activation with tasks.Children and adults with autism spectrum appear to have weak central coherence and are overly focussed on details to the expense of a global perspective. This could explain typical autistic behaviors such as valuing sameness, attending to parts of objects and persistence in behaviors related to details.Rhonda Booth and Francesa Happe from the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre at the Institute of Psychiatry in London have published a study of central coherence in children with autism, ADHD and controls.There study involved a simple sentence completion task. The example provided is--Complete this sentence "Hunting with a knife and". Child with weak central coherence typically finish this sentence with "fork". Normals tend to expand on a global response like "catch a bear". The authors tested a ten question Sentence Completion Task with the following findings:Completion scores (central coherence) increased with age--children younger than 13 had lower completion scoresMost (but not all) children with autism showed weak central coherence on the task (more local error responses)Children with ADHD did not differ from controls on the taskInhibition difficulties did not increase the weak coherence local response ratesThe authors conclude "the Sentence Completion Task appears to be a simple and easy-to-administer test capable of tapping local processing bias, or weak coherence, in a range of populations". You will likely be hearing more about the neuropsychological concept of coherence in a variety of studies across the clinical neuroscience disorders.Photo of Electrical Power Line Fire Courtesy of Yates PhotographyBooth, R., & Happé, F. (2010). “Hunting with a knife and … fork”: Examining central coherence in autism, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and typical development with a linguistic task Journal of Experimental Child Psychology DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2010.06.003Lee PS, Foss-Feig J, Henderson JG, Kenworthy LE, Gilotty L, Gaillard WD, & Vaidya CJ (2007). Atypical neural substrates of Embedded Figures Task performance in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. NeuroImage, 38 (1), 184-93 PMID: 17707658...
Booth, R., & Happé, F. (2010) “Hunting with a knife and … fork”: Examining central coherence in autism, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and typical development with a linguistic task. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2010.06.003 “Hunting with a knife and … fork”: Examining central coherence in autism, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and typical development with a linguistic task
Lee PS, Foss-Feig J, Henderson JG, Kenworthy LE, Gilotty L, Gaillard WD, & Vaidya CJ. (2007) Atypical neural substrates of Embedded Figures Task performance in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. NeuroImage, 38(1), 184-93. PMID: 17707658 Atypical neural substrates of Embedded Figures Task performance in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Comments