Talk:Weak central coherence theory

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[edit] Thursday October 25th, 2007

Hi,

I have some problem with how the first paragraph of the "support and criticism" section is built up. Firstly, maybe it makes more sense to separate the two things to clarify things. Secondly there is a summations which is not preceded by a semicolon, and that makes the structure of the text a bit bizarre. Especially since this number 1:

1. Results in which these skills are measured with visuospatial tasks confirm the theory to a large extent. Autistic individuals performed tasks where a design or a figure had to be divided into their constituent parts faster than control individuals. For example, autistic individuals perceived the constituent blocks in an unsegmented condition of a Block Design Task more easily (Happé, 1999; Ehlers et al., 1997; Shah & Frith, 1993). In addition, they performed Embedded Figures Tasks in which hidden shapes in drawings have to be found as quickly as possible, better than control individuals (Happé, 1994b; Jolliffe & Baron-Cohen, 1997; Shah & Frith, 1983).

sums up studies which are not relevant to weak central coherence theory. These studies confirm that autistics have stronger local coherence. The two skills are not related in the sense that being good at one means to be bad at the other. It is like saying "we have found people with good eyesight are better at driving cars, so they must be bad at walking..."

It is not because Frith and Happé write their papers in this sense that it is objective. If people want to keep this section, please motivate or suggest some changes to put it into context...

thx

dennis