Exploring the Cognitive Foundations of the Shared Attention Mechanism: Evidence for a Relationship Between Self-Categorization and Shared Attention Across the Autism Spectrum

A Self-Categorization Perspective of Idiosyncratic Deals and Creativity: Mediating Role of Perceived Insider Status and Moderating Role of Psychological Safety

Purpose

Idiosyncratic deals (I-deals), a novel human resource management implement, has significantly contributed to attracting, retaining and motivating personnel to enhance creativity. Building upon self-categorization theory, this study investigates the impact of I-deals on creativity and the moderating role of psychological safety in this process by perceived insider status.

Participants and Methods

To mitigate common method bias and causal lag effects, this study was conducted in three phases with a half-month interval for data collection. In this study, a total of 331 employees from six enterprises in China were selected to test the hypotheses using Bootstrap and Johnson-Neyman methods.

Results

Results show that I-deals have a positive influence on creativity. Perceived insider status acts as intermediary between I-deals and creativity; Psychological safety strengthens the influence of I-deals on perceived insider status and further enhances the indirect influence of I-deals on creativity through perceived insider status.

Conclusion

This study demonstrates that organizations can leverage the unique characteristics of I-deals to fully showcase the diverse talents of their personnel, while simultaneously enhancing their psychological security. This, in turn, empowers employees to confidently propose new ideas and methods, thus catalyzing the generation of creativity.

Autistic traits as a mediator between visual working memory capacity and enhanced performance in visual-perceptual tasks in children with ASD

The present study aimed to identify autistic traits as a mediator between visual working memory capacity and enhanced performance in visual-perceptual tasks in children with ASD. One hundred-forty children, ages 4-6 years, participated in this study (mean age = 5.34 ± 4.11, 98 males). They were recruited from Taiba Specialized Centers for the Care of People with Special Needs in Saudi Arabia. A correlational design was used to identify the mediating role of autistic traits in the relationship between visual working memory capacity and enhanced performance in visual-perceptual tasks in children with ASD. The present study developed a theoretical model that incorporated autistic traits as a mediator between visual working memory capacity and enhanced performance in visual-perceptual tasks in children with ASD. The study findings indicate that: (1) A significant positive correlation exists between autistic traits and visual working memory capacity; (2) A significant positive correlation exists between autistic traits and enhanced performance in visual-perceptual tasks; (3) The relationship between visual working memory capacity and enhanced performance is mediated by autistic traits.

Theory of collective mind

Theory of mind research has traditionally focused on the ascription of mental states to a single individual. Here, we introduce a theory of collective mind: the ascription of a unified mental state to a group of agents with convergent experiences. Rather than differentiation between one's personal perspective and that of another agent, a theory of collective mind requires perspectival unification across agents. We review recent scholarship across the cognitive sciences concerning the conceptual foundations of collective mind representations and their empirical induction through the synchronous arrival of shared information. Research suggests that representations of a collective mind cause psychological amplification of co-attended stimuli, create relational bonds, and increase cooperation, among co-attendees.

The (un)learning of social functions and its significance for mental health

Social interactions are dynamic, context-dependent, and reciprocal events that influence prospective strategies and require constant practice and adaptation. This complexity of social interactions creates several research challenges. We propose a new framework encouraging future research to investigate not only individual differences in capacities relevant for social functioning and their underlying mechanisms, but also the flexibility to adapt or update one's social abilities. We suggest three key capacities relevant for social functioning: (1) social perception, (2) sharing emotions or empathizing, and (3) mentalizing. We elaborate on how adaptations in these capacities may be investigated on behavioral and neural levels. Research on these flexible adaptations of one's social behavior is needed to specify how humans actually "learn to be social". Learning to adapt implies plasticity of the relevant brain networks involved in the underlying social processes, indicating that social abilities are malleable for different contexts. To quantify such measures, researchers need to find ways to investigate learning through dynamic changes in adaptable social paradigms and examine several factors influencing social functioning within the three aformentioned social key capacities. This framework furthers insight concerning individual differences, provides a holistic approach to social functioning, and may improve interventions for ameliorating social abilities in patients.

The impact of a positive autism identity and autistic community solidarity on social anxiety and mental health in autistic young people

LAY ABSTRACT

Autism is a diagnosis given to individuals by professionals but is also increasingly seen as an identity which an individual can choose for themselves. We wanted to explore how having autism as an identity affects autistic young people. There is evidence that autistic adults have better psychological well-being when they feel more solidarity with other autistic people and feel positively about being autistic. We know that autistic teenagers often feel anxious in social situations. Having a positive autism identity might help alleviate social anxiety associated with being autistic. We wanted to find out if autistic young people who felt more solidarity with other autistic people, and had more positive feelings about autism, had better psychological well-being and less social anxiety. We asked 121 autistic people aged 15-22 years to complete some questionnaires. These questionnaires asked about the young person's autism traits, social anxiety, and psychological well-being. The questionnaires also asked how satisfied they felt to be autistic (satisfaction) and how much solidarity they felt with the autism community (solidarity). We found that autistic young people who had higher autism satisfaction had better psychological well-being and lower social anxiety. Young people who felt more solidarity with other autistic people had higher psychological well-being. There was no association between autism solidarity and social anxiety. We conclude that is important to support autistic young people to develop positive feelings about autism and to feel solidarity with other autistic people.

Levels of Self-representation and Their Sociocognitive Correlates in Late-Diagnosed Autistic Adults

The cognitive representation of oneself is central to other sociocognitive processes, including relations with others. It is reflected in faster, more accurate processing of self-relevant information, a "self-prioritisation effect" (SPE) which is inconsistent across studies in autism. Across two tasks with autistic and non-autistic participants, we explored the SPE and its relationship to autistic traits, mentalizing ability and loneliness. A SPE was intact in both groups, but together the two tasks suggested a reduced tendency of late-diagnosed autistic participants to differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar others and greater ease disengaging from the self-concept. Correlations too revealed a complex picture, which we attempt to explore and disentangle with reference to the inconsistency across self-processing studies in autism, highlighting implications for future research.

The “Primitive Brain Dysfunction” Theory of Autism: The Superior Colliculus Role

A better understanding of the pathogenesis of autism will help clarify our conception of the complexity of normal brain development. The crucial deficit may lie in the postnatal changes that vision produces in the brainstem nuclei during early life. The superior colliculus is the primary brainstem visual center. Although difficult to examine in humans with present techniques, it is known to support behaviors essential for every vertebrate to survive, such as the ability to pay attention to relevant stimuli and to produce automatic motor responses based on sensory input. From birth to death, it acts as a brain sentinel that influences basic aspects of our behavior. It is the main brainstem hub that lies between the environment and the rest of the higher neural system, making continuous, implicit decisions about where to direct our attention. The conserved cortex-like organization of the superior colliculus in all vertebrates allows the early appearance of primitive emotionally-related behaviors essential for survival. It contains first-line specialized neurons enabling the detection and tracking of faces and movements from birth. During development, it also sends the appropriate impulses to help shape brain areas necessary for social-communicative abilities. These abilities require the analysis of numerous variables, such as the simultaneous evaluation of incoming information sustained by separate brain networks (visual, auditory and sensory-motor, social, emotional, etc.), and predictive capabilities which compare present events to previous experiences and possible responses. These critical aspects of decision-making allow us to evaluate the impact that our response or behavior may provoke in others. The purpose of this review is to show that several enigmas about the complexity of autism might be explained by disruptions of collicular and brainstem functions. The results of two separate lines of investigation: 1. the cognitive, etiologic, and pathogenic aspects of autism on one hand, and two. the functional anatomy of the colliculus on the other, are considered in order to bridge the gap between basic brain science and clinical studies and to promote future research in this unexplored area.

Agency and Identity in the Collective Self

Contemporary research on human sociality is heavily influenced by the social identity approach, positioning social categorization as the primary mechanism governing social life. Building on the distinction between agency and identity in the individual self ("I" vs. "Me"), we emphasize the analogous importance of distinguishing collective agency from collective identity ("We" vs. "Us"). While collective identity is anchored in the unique characteristics of group members, collective agency involves the adoption of a shared subjectivity that is directed toward some object of our attention, desire, emotion, belief, or action. These distinct components of the collective self are differentiated in terms of their mental representations, neurocognitive underpinnings, conditions of emergence, mechanisms of social convergence, and functional consequences. Overall, we show that collective agency provides a useful complement to the social categorization approach, with unique implications for multiple domains of human social life, including collective action, responsibility, dignity, violence, dominance, ritual, and morality.

Social identities and mental well-being in autistic adults

Social identities relate to psychological perceptions of group memberships and form part of the self-concept. Socially identifying with groups has previously been found to associate with better mental well-being outcomes. This study first examined the factor structure and the reliability of measuring social identification in autistic adults. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that a factor structure was replicated in this sample for social identification with other autistic people, but not the family. Second, the study assessed the level to which autistic adults socially identified with different groups, the total number of social identities and whether these were associated with their mental well-being. Autistic adults reported feelings of social identification with many kinds of groups, some with multiple groups, whereas others did not socially identify with any group. Stronger feelings of social identification towards other autistic people and towards one’s family, and with more groups overall, were associated with less severe self-reported depression symptoms and more facets of positive mental health. These findings indicate the importance of facilitating autistic people’s engagement with social groups.

Self-categorization and Autism: Exploring the Relationship Between Autistic Traits and Ingroup Favouritism in the Minimal Group Paradigm

The Integrated self-categorization model of autism (ISCA) argues that a self-categorization dysfunction could be the link between some of the disparate features of ASD. To the extent that this is true, any social psychological phenomena arising from self-categorization should be impaired in autistic people. Based on this premise, we investigated whether ingroup favouritism within the minimal group paradigm is reduced to the extent that individuals possess autistic traits. Results indicated that participants with a high proportion of autistic traits showed less ingroup favouritism, and that this was due to a decreased tendency for self-categorization. By providing evidence of the disruption of self-categorization in ASD, these findings lend support to ISCA and raise important issues for existing accounts of the disorder.

Exploring the spatial working memory and visual perception in children with autism spectrum disorder and general population with high autism-like traits

The aim of the study is to compare the spatial working memory and visual perception between children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing control (TDC). Furthermore, this study validated whether this impairment was a feature of autism in general population with different autism-like traits (ALTs). This study contains two parts: case-control study and community population study. The ASD group and the control group were enlisted voluntarily (ASD group, n = 52; control group, n = 32). In the population study, we recruited 2994 children. Based on the scores of Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ), children were divided into two groups (higher ALTs n = 122, lower ALTs n = 122). The participants completed the cognition tasks focusing on spatial working memory, visual-motor integration, and Intelligence. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was conducted, with potential confounders IQ, age, and gender were controlled. Pearson correlations were computed by controlling the IQ and age as covariate to better understand the relations between visual perception, spatial working memory, and autism-like traits. In the case-control study, the results of cognition tasks focusing on the spatial working memory and visual perception indicated underperformance in children with ASD. In the community population study, we found that individuals with higher ALTs performed worse than children with lower ALTs in spatial working memory. Pearson correlation analysis suggested that a correlation between SWM total errors and visual perception was identified both in the children with ASD and in community population (ASD group, r = -0.592, p<0.001; general population, r = -0.201, p = 0.003). It suggested that spatial working memory deficit was a characteristic of autism, and may be distributed across the general population. Furthermore, we speculated a correlation between spatial working memory and visual perception in children with ASD and in general population.

The impact of bilingualism on the narrative ability and the executive functions of children with autism spectrum disorders

While there is ample evidence that monolingual children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) face difficulties with narrative story-telling and executive functions (EF), there is considerable uncertainty about how bilingualism impacts these skills in autism. The current study explores the effect of bilingualism on the narrative and EF skills of forty 7-to-12-year-old bilingual and monolingual children with ASD, as well as forty age-matched bilingual and monolingual children of typical development (TD). Narrative production data were elicited using the Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument (ENNI; Schneider et al., 2005), which was developed to measure narrative production at a microstructural and macrostructural level. The same children were administered two EF tasks, namely, a global-local visual attention task and a 2-back working memory task. In story-telling, bilingual children with ASD achieved higher scores than monolingual children with ASD on story structure complexity and use of adverbial clauses, and they tended to use significantly fewer ambiguous referential forms than their monolingual peers with ASD. In the global-local task, bilingual children with ASD were faster and more accurate in global trials than monolingual children with ASD, who tended to be more susceptible to interference from locally presented information than the other experimental groups. Higher accuracy and faster response times were also observed for bilingual children with ASD in the 2-back task. Further correlation analyses between the story-telling and EF tasks revealed that bilingual children with ASD drew on a broader range of EF in narrative production than their monolingual peers. The overall findings reveal that bilingual children with ASD outperformed their monolingual peers with ASD in both the microstructure and macrostructure of their narrative production, as well as in their visual attention and working memory skills.

Self-processing in individuals with autism spectrum disorder

Research attempting to explain the social difficulties observed in autism spectrum disorder has focused predominantly on difficulties understanding others, but there are indications that self-referential processing is also atypical in autism. For example, infants who later get an autism diagnosis show a reduced response when hearing their own name. In addition, research suggests that the self-bias (the tendency to preferentially process information when self-relevant) is smaller or absent in autism. However, findings are mixed: researchers are yet to clarify exactly those aspects of self-processing which are atypical in autism and in what way they are atypical. To gain further insight into these issues, future studies should focus on whether and how different aspects of self-processing are related in both neurotypical and autistic individuals. Furthermore, the (a)typical development of different aspects of the self, as well as the impact of the self on different domains of cognitive processing, deserves further attention, requiring studies with participants in a wide age range. Finally, the use of neural measures of self-processing will be invaluable, given the recent hypothesis that autistic individuals may learn to compensate for difficulties by relying on neural pathways which differ from those utilised by neurotypical individuals. Autism Res 2019, 1-5. © 2019 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: Research has indicated that individuals with autism spectrum disorder show differences in the processing of self-relevant information. However, as yet, exactly how self-processing differs in autism remains unknown. To further our understanding of the self in autism, future studies should focus on the relationship between different aspects of self-processing, investigating brain activity as well as behaviour, across a wide range of ages.

Theory of Mind Performance in Broad Autism Phenotype Groups: Between-Group Differences and Predictor Variables

Investigated between-group differences in cognitive/affective theory of mind (ToM) and predictors of cognitive ToM both within broad autism phenotype/non (BAP/Non-BAP) groups as well as across the sample. The BAP group (n = 45) performed worse than the Non-BAP group (n = 102) on the unexpected outcomes test (UOT), but groups were similar regarding reading the mind in the eyes test (RMET). Stepwise regression indicated RMET best predicted UOT for the BAP group; block design best predicted UOT in the Non-BAP group. BAP traits did not mediate the relation of RMET to UOT performance. While RMET and UOT appear similarly related in BAP/Non-BAP samples, use of emotion recognition abilities in a cognitive ToM task may reflect over-reliance on this skill in the BAP.

Autism Pathogenesis: The Superior Colliculus

After been exposed to the visual input, in the first year of life, the brain experiences subtle but massive changes apparently crucial for communicative/emotional and social human development. Its lack could be the explanation of the very high prevalence of autism in children with total congenital blindness. The present theory postulates that the superior colliculus is the key structure for such changes for several reasons: it dominates visual behavior during the first months of life; it is ready at birth for complex visual tasks; it has a significant influence on several hemispheric regions; it is the main brain hub that permanently integrates visual and non-visual, external and internal information (bottom-up and top-down respectively); and it owns the enigmatic ability to take non-conscious decisions about where to focus attention. It is also a sentinel that triggers the subcortical mechanisms which drive social motivation to follow faces from birth and to react automatically to emotional stimuli. Through indirect connections it also activates simultaneously several cortical structures necessary to develop social cognition and to accomplish the multiattentional task required for conscious social interaction in real life settings. Genetic or non-genetic prenatal or early postnatal factors could disrupt the SC functions resulting in autism. The timing of postnatal biological disruption matches the timing of clinical autism manifestations. Astonishing coincidences between etiologies, clinical manifestations, cognitive and pathogenic autism theories on one side and SC functions on the other are disclosed in this review. Although the visual system dependent of the SC is usually considered as accessory of the LGN canonical pathway, its imprinting gives the brain a qualitatively specific functions not supplied by any other brain structure.

A collective perspective: shared attention and the mind

I review the recent literature on shared attention, instances in which one's personal perspective is also another's. As described by Shteynberg [6^••], shared attention involves the activation of a psychological perspective that is personal and plural and irreducibly collective-a perspective in which the world is experienced from 'our attention'. When shared attention is perceived, information under shared attention receives deeper cognitive processing. By updating mutual knowledge, shared attention facilitates communication and, quite possibly, the creation of shared attitudes and beliefs. In this review, I focus on the last 5 years of empirical work detailing the cognitive and affective consequences of shared attention. I also highlight empirical work on the relevance of shared attention to pragmatically important challenges, such as the polarizing effects of social and mass media consumption, as well as the cognitive mechanisms behind autism-like traits. In all, the findings underscore the possibility that shared attention is a basic psychological building block of human sociality-a capacity to act collectively with others who share one's reality.