ABSTRACT
This volume covers several perspectives on autism which bring together the most recent scientific views of the nature of this disorder. A number of themes organize major developments and emerging areas in autism:
- Cognitive and neural systems development: how autism arises in the behavior and thought of very young children.
- Discovering brain mechanisms underlying social and cognitive deficits in autism: how we can explain "social awkwardness" and poor language comprehension in terms of malfunctions of brain mechanisms, revealed by fMRI studies of people with autism.
- Integrating information about genes, brain, and biological mechanisms with behavioral evidence.
- Linking the science of autism with lives lived: how the new information about autism impacts people with autism and real-world considerations.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part Section I|31 pages
Lives Lived with Autism
chapter 1|9 pages
My Experience with Visual Thinking and Sensory Oversensitivity
The Need for Research on Sensory Problems
part Section II|70 pages
Brain Mechanisms and Genetic Influences
chapter 4|15 pages
Implicit Learning and Reward Systems Deficit in Autism
A Mechanism for Social Learning Deficit?
chapter 5|22 pages
Autism Susceptibility Genes and Normal Variation
Connecting Genes to Brain Structure and Function
part Section III|45 pages
Developmental Processes in Autism
part Section IV|69 pages
Neural Systems in Social and Emotional Processes
part Section V|22 pages
Overview
