Plasticity of cognitive development in autism spectrum disorder: a cross-cultural study

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26590141
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Educational psychology
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: HASEGAWA Toshikazu 東京大学, 大学院総合文化研究科, 教授 (30172894)
• Research Collaborator: SENJU Atsushi ロンドン大学, バークベック校, 准教授 ; HARADA Nanami ロンドン大学, バークベック校
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 自閉スペクトラム症 / 比較文化

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Cross-cultural cognitive psychological research has been conducted to study the impact of sociocultural environment on the development of cognition and attention in children with ASD, who suffer from social adaptation and interpersonal communication. As a result, children with ASD show cultural differences in the development of attention to faces (social attention) and to landscapes (non-social attention) just as typically developing children. These results suggest that children with ASD develop cognitive and attentional skills adaptive to surrounding sociocultural environment, just as typically developing children.

Free Research Field

進化心理学・発達心理学