The unexpected is a lot less surprising for patients with autism

Dubova/Epictura

Published the 01.08.2017 at 17h49

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autismeneurologie

Imagine that you open your sock drawer, and you find a pineapple. The find is surprising. Now add to the situation an infant who plays in the room. The presence of a fruit in the clothes is a little less amazing, because the child increases the probability of unexpected events.

His actions are detrimental to the proper understanding of the link between the presence of a sock drawer, and the container probably, that is to say, socks. It is as well as researchers from University college London (UCL) have imaged the comprehension difficulties experienced by individuals with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the face of what surrounds them.

Instability in external

An experiment that they conducted on fifty people, half of whom had ASD, has shown that the autistic overestimated the fickleness of their environment. For them, no need for the presence of a child for upsetting the odds. This could explain a part of their symptoms, especially with regard to their intolerance to change.

“The idea of a link between the construction of expectations visual different in the autistic and their social difficulties is an intriguing possibility,” says Geraint Rees, professor of neurology cognitive at UCL, and one of the authors of the study published in Nature neuroscience.