THE INFLUENCE OF SPATIAL COGNITION IN THEORY OF MIND AND CENTRAL COHERENCE TASKS: STUDY IN AUTISM

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ADS) is a severe developmental disability characterized by impairments in social interaction and communicative skills. Despite a growing research interest in the field, the causes of these impairments remain unknown. Two lines of research, Theory of Mind (ToM) and Central Coherence (CC), using experimental tasks such as visuo-spatial perspective Taking (VPT) and the local and global levels have suggested that visuo-spatial attention and spatial variables in the self-versus other recognition, may be the basis of the cognitive processes underlying social interaction. According to spatial attention, such as observed in the Unilateral spatial neglect (USN) may contribute to explain the differences in the spatial attention and the brain activation of autistic children in these two tasks. Participants with ASD in the CC experiment were slower to respond to the left hemifield in the global level. In the VPT experiment the participants with ASD were slower to respond to the left hemifield in the interaction first personal perspective (1PP) and condition Common ground (CG), meanwhile was slower to response to the right hemifield in the interaction Third personal perspective (3PP) and condition Common Ground (CG). However in the interaction Privileged ground (PG) and 1PP the ASD group was slower to response to the right hemifield.