User:Teromakotero/Autism/Central Coherence Theory

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 Central Coherence Theory

Uta Frith and her colleagues have suggested that autistic children lack a drive for central coherence. Uta Frith and her colleagues have suggested that autistic children lack a drive for central coherence. Normally developed people have this drive to integrate and organize information from their environment to build comprehensive interpretations of situations. They do so by reading the intentions of others from their eyes, gestures, and from other important contextual clues relating to the environment. (Schreibman 2005, 117.)

With Uta Frith's weak central coherence theory can be explained not only known specific deficits in autism, such as the difficulty of the joined attention and the Theory of Mind, but also other significant autism-related features such as insistence on sameness, stereotyped and repetitive behaviors and restricted interests. These are behaviors that suggest reduced interest to the environment as well as deficits to understand contextual cues. (Schreibman 2005, 117.)

Uta Frith, and other researchers with the hypothesis that the primary deficit in autism can be found in the weakness of social cognition, have attempted to identify specific neurological basis, which could explain the weak central coherence and why it does not develop in autistic person. So far, however, such neurological correlation has not been identified. (Schreibman 2005, 117-118.)