Dear Students!
Our next speaker on the 7th of February will be Peter Mundy who will talk about: "The Sharing Mind: Autism, Neurodiversity, and Joint Attention"
You will need to read the first 2 chapters in his book "Autism & Joint Attention" and his paper!
Mundy—Chapters 1 and 2
ReplyDeleteThe first chapter of the Mundy book begins by outlining a brief history of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), tracing the evolution of identification and description of the disorder. While it may be tempting to categorize individuals as autistic based solely on diagnostic criteria of “pervasive lack of responsiveness to others,” for example, Mundy identifies the flaws in not only the use of specific diagnostic criteria that are not found in all autistic individuals, but also in the use of a strict categorical diagnosis. He advocates for identifying all distinctive bio-behavioral dimensions that play a role in ASD and their interactions throughout development, thus resulting in a more “fuzzy,” continuous, spectrum-like range of possible outcomes and diagnoses as the child’s age or levels of achievement change. This allows for a more complex, broad-range, and multi-faceted view of the disorder, including identification of phenotype features that may have very adaptive behavioral expressions in the general population. Chapter 2 then presents the argument that joint attention plays a critical role in the early identification of ASD and should thus be included as a separate but related entity to abnormal social symptoms reflected in ASD. Joint attention is the ability to process information about our own point of reference, the point of reference of another person, and whether the information about the self and the other are co-directed in reference to something in the world.
Article
Mundy (2017) reviewed literature on joint attention with a developmental focus in normal and autistic populations. Joint attention requires social coordination of our own attention with another person to share information and a common point of reference, and it can be divided into two categories: responding to joint attention (RJA) and initiating joint attention (IJA). Joint attention, he asserts, is a fundamental support for neurocognitive development of social cognition as it is a goal-oriented behavior for sharing experiences with other people. While some studies report differences in neural activation between RJA and IJA tasks, overall, joint attention requires whole-brain activation. Several studies have demonstrated consistent activity in particular brain regions, including: dorsal and medial frontal cortex, orbital frontal/insular cortex, anterior/posterior cingulate cortex, superior temporal cortex, precuneus/parietal cortex, amygdala, and the striatum. Studies of RJA/IJA reveal differences among people diagnosed with ASD compared to neurotypically developed controls, underscoring the potential application of joint attention and social cognition research in understanding the development of ASD.
In Chapter 1, Mundy traces the evolution of autism as a diagnostic category and the criteria used to diagnose it. A central theme in autism research has been a degree “aloofness” and unresponsiveness in social interactions. However, Mundy presents evidence that social impairments are complex can occur across multiple dimensions in autistic children—in fact many autistic children seek out social interactions, but respond in awkward ways. He argues that autism should not be regarded as a unitary diagnosis, but rather a group of related disorders that can manifest in a wide variety of behaviors and characteristics that are the product of complex interactions between factors related to the diagnosis, a spectrum of normal variation in human behavior, and cultural-environmental conditions.
ReplyDeleteIn chapter 2, Mundy argues that "joint attention is one of the vital cognitive and motivational functions the human brain has evolved to perform” (Mundy, p. 21). Join attention is that ability sharing awareness of an object of attention with another person. He argues that deficits in joint attention are key to understanding autism. Joint attention is a necessary precursor to language development and symbolic communication. Mundy makes it clear that joint attention is a complex process that requires integrating “multiple channels" of attention. Furthermore, he makes a clear distinction between orientation and attention. For Mundy, attention is a more active process that allows for the object of awareness to be integrated into goal directed behaviors. Personally, I find this point to be quite interesting as it meshes quite well with Dehaene’s notion of conscious awareness as a means to make mental objects available for reflection and, ultimately, as something that can be shared with others. While Mundy and Dehaene may be using different definitions of the term attention, the similarities between the underlying processes of joint attention and conscious awareness is striking. In a certain sense, joint attention seems like an extension of conscious awareness that happens when an object of awareness is integrated with awareness of another person. This raises interesting questions about the nature of this integration process. Is joint attention supported by rapid switching between referential and interpersonal foci of awareness? Are multiple foci of awareness fused into a larger schema that functions as a single mental object—an abstraction of the triadic relationship? Mundy argues that joint attention requires monitoring 3 sources of information (intra-personal, objective/referent, inter-personal)and that joint attention deficits could be related to difficulties with any one of these or the combination and integration of several. Mundy concludes by presenting evidence that in autism, joint attention deficits related to inter-personal factors are among the most fundamental features of the diagnosis.
Article
ReplyDeleteMundy presents a review of the most recent efforts to understand how joint-attention, and by extension social cognition, emerge in typical development and autism. The brain networks that support joint-attention are distributed across a wide array of cortical and sub-cortical structures. Furthermore, the networks that are implicated in social cognition—and in particular theory of mind—overlap a great deal with joint attention networks. Mundy defines joint-attention as a process that integrates 3 streams of information: internal information about one’s own perspective, goals, and emotions, external information about the perspective, goals, and emotions of others, and a third object of awareness. Mundy posits that there are two fundamentally different joint-attention behaviors: the ability to respond to and follow the attention of others (RJA), and the ability initiate interactions with others to share one’s own object of attention (IJA). He presents evidence that shows that RJA and IJA develop at different times, with IJA developing later than RJA. The neurological networks implicated in both IJA and RJA do overlap a great deal, however there is evidence that suggests that diverge in that IJA includes activation of areas related in the amygdala and striatum. These areas are related to rewards and motivation. Mundy concludes, that social rewards are a driving force in IJA. He presents evidence from studies comparing people with and without autism that show that people with autistic traits have lower levels of connectivity and activation in these reward areas when engaging with others.
Mundy argues that joint-attention (both RJA and IJA) is a domain-general and fundamental process that can develop regardless of different types of sensory input—as evidenced by studies in children who are blind and/or deaf. This claim is a rebuttal to literature that theorizes that difficulties in social-cognition in people with autistic traits arise from an early and fundamental disturbance in facial processing. Mundy contends that early deficits in joint attention, in particular the social-reward system that motivates individuals to initiate joint attention (IJA), can explain difficulties with eye contact and later social cognition.
These readings offered an overview of joint attention, connections with neural systems of social cognition, and an overview of the role of joint attention in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In the article for this week, the Mundy (2017) review assessed the current imaging data that may allow us to better understand the neural systems of joint attention and social-cognitive development. Though the current literature is limited, the information that is available suggests that joint attention overlaps with regions involving “mentalizing.” Understanding the role that joint attention plays in the development of social cognition could be an integral part of intervention and our potential for detecting early biological markers for neurodevelopmental disorders.
ReplyDeleteIn the book chapters, Mundy (2016) elaborated on the elements of joint attention and the role it plays in ASD. Chapter 1 provided a nice overview of ASD and introduction to the concept of joint attention. Joint attention is the ability to coordinate attention with others to attend to an object or event. The triadic relationship created during joint attention requires complex social information processing by both the signal receiver and the signal sender. It requires the processing of your own perspective, the other person’s perspective, and the processing of information about the referent. Joint attention is not just important to language development but it is essential to the broader capacity of human learning and teaching (p. 32). Sharing attention serves both cognitive and emotional functions. First, sharing attention is a way of learning from each other through instruction. Secondly, sharing attention is a way of experiencing a sense of intersubjectivity or being able to put yourself in “someone else’s shoes.” Joint attention encompasses a greater role than just affecting one the domain of the proposed systems for social processes. It may involve more due to the complex level of processing required for a triadic social interaction.
In ASD, the ability or motivation to share attention with another person is not as strong. I found the examples Mundy gives on p. 27 helpful. When discussing ASD, I often think about it in the scope of infancy. However, thinking about it from the perspective of school-age children with ASD provided a better visual of what social interaction difficulties persist. Mundy really breaks down the limits of our current understanding of disorders like ASD. The heterogeneous nature of the dimensions of neurodevelopmental disorders makes it difficult to create a fixed set of criteria for presentation. There is a great deal of variability within ASD. What will be the best way of treating this variability in the future?
In the first two chapters of his book, Autism & Joint Attention, Mundy describes the adaptations of the diagnostic criteria of autism as well as the pervasive relevance of joint attention to this developmental disorder. Although Kanner posited in 1943 that atypical social development was a vital piece of the understanding of autism, research and diagnostic criteria did not begin to fully incorporate this aspect until many years later. Mundy proposes that rather than viewing diagnostic criteria as strict categories (autism vs. not autism) that autism should be evaluated utilizing a dimensional approach. This approach allows for dimensions that are characteristic of the disorder as well as dimensions of human nature which interact to form various expressions of symptoms. This approach provides a better description of the symptom heterogeneity across individuals and development.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, Mundy emphasizes the role of joint attention in typical development and differences observed in autism. He describes three aspects required for joint attention including: information about an individual's own point of reference, information about another's point of reference, and the object of reference. It is this ability of joint attention that enables us to integrate internal and external information and stimuli as individuals and share this information with others in the form of collaboration or cooperation. Particularly, some studies have shown that while individuals with autism may demonstrate difficulty in both responding to joint attention and initiating joint attention problems with initiation may provide a more significant identifying characteristic of autism.
Lastly, in his article (2017), Mundy reviews neuroimaging studies investigating differences in typically developing individuals and those with autism. These studies support Mundy's suggestion that joint attention is significantly affected in those with autism as these individuals demonstrated less activation in joint attention tasks. Additionally, these imaging studies reveal a great degree of overlap between the cortical regions associated with social-cognitive processing and those believed to be important for joint attention. While further investigation is necessary to differentiate regions of interest specific to joint attention, these studies provide advances that may identify particular biomarkers of autism and potentially lead to earlier identification and more targeted intervention strategies.
Mundy, P. C. (2016). Autism and joint attention: Development, neuroscience, and clinical fundamentals. (pp. 1-40). New York, NY: Guilford.
ReplyDeleteChapter 1: A brief history of the concept of autism
The understanding and definition of autism has varied drastically since its initial descriptions in the mid 20th century. It wasn’t until late 20th century autism was recognized as a spectrum disorder that could be influenced by biological and environmental factors. Current research focuses include symptom heterogeneity, the complex etiology, and the seemingly distinctive symptom of absent joint attention in autism. However, there is no single symptom that defines autism given its large heterogeneity, as is the case with all neurodevelopmental (ND) disorders. The utility of categorical criteria to define any ND disorder has been revisited in recent years, suggesting that not all disorders are chronically “set” diagnoses, rather stochastic systems. Two other theories proposed to help understand the heterogeneity of autism include the moderator model and the continuous dimension viewpoint, that both highlight the many different variables that can contribute to the genotype and phenotype of autism.
Chapter 2: The dimension of joint attention and ASD diagnosis
Several criteria describing developmental disorders, such as the research domain criteria (RDoC), describe joint attention as having a very small function in human development. Joint attention refers to the ability to share attention of something (physical or mental) with someone else and is an integral tool to share language and sociality with others, and likely plays a larger role in many social functions that are unique to humans for which the RDoC gives credit. Individuals with autism may have a reduced capacity, or motivation, for joint attention, which can severely impact language and cognitive development. It can be argued that language necessitates joint attention to symbolic mental representations. The presence of autism can clearly influence many aspects of social affect, engagement, and learning in neurodevelopment. Research through the years has played a large role in how we diagnose autism based on behavioral symptoms. Continued research on joint attention will likely continue to remain a focal construct, as it has become evident to be a strong marker for the presence or absence of autism.
Mundy, P. (2017). A Review of Joint Attention and Social-Cognitive Brain Systems in Typical Development and Autism Spectrum Disorder. European Journal of Neuroscience, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejn.13720
There have been many studies providing neurocognitive models for social cognition, in which joint attention is often not viewed as a pertinent dimension. The purpose of this study is to highlight the existing research showing evidence that joint attention is required for the neurodevelopment of social cognition and its relation to autism. Infants have evidenced responses to and initiation of joint attention from birth, indicating its presence from early infancy, suggesting an internal motivation for social interactions in humans. It is believed that joint attention throughout development is integral to the development of social cognition and the ability to mentalize information, thus theory of mind. Neurological deficits in the frontal, temporal, parietal lobes, PCC, and basal ganglia can result in joint attention deficits. These have been found to be a fundamental impairment in autism from early infancy through adulthood, which can further impair social cognition development.
A Brief History of the Concept of Autism
ReplyDeleteChapter 1 deals with the initial studies and findings regarding Autism Spectrum Disorder(ASD) and highlights the importance of advancement in technology to better understand the symptoms and form a common ground between them. Mundy talks about Kanner observations regarding children displaying symptoms such as common impairment of affective relatedness to others, inability to effectively socially interact. Aforementioned symptoms still serve as basis for classifying ASD. Common notion that autism is caused by parenting in isolation were proven wrong during studies conducted in 1960s and 1970s. These studies highlighted that parenting of children suffering from ASD did not differ from those who weren’t diagnosed. Another particularly interesting observation showcased proved common misbelief that children with autism tend to stay aloof wrong by providing evidence that children with autism displayed attachment behavior during separation or reunion.
Chapter 2 introduces join attention which is used as very first test to correctly diagnose children with ASD. RDoC or Research Domain Criteria was what led to the development of joint attention and was used as an alternative to symptom-based diagnosis. Mundy emphasizes that joint attention is an amalgamation of cognitive and motivational functions. To further clarify joint attention, Mundy defined attention as an active process of information processing. Cognitive level is responsible for attention spotlights which plays a vital task in spatial social attention coordination. Emotional level on the other hand serves helps us experience intersubjectivity by enabling us to share our attention spotlights. Mundy also talked about attenuation of joint attention development and the way it causes disturbances in language and intellectual development. Joint attention development in people diagnosed with ASD can be affected by difficulty or inability to process self-referenced information or coordinate with others references.
Article
This article serves as a review of imaging literature on neurodevelopment of joint attention. Mundy establishes the findings in this article in support of neurodevelopment of joint attention and its effect on human social cognition. The article inferences that joint attention is severely affected in a person with ASD. He states that joint attention is responsible for the ability of a person to socially coordinate its own attention with another person to achieve a common point of reference. In the following article he defines two important form of joint attention which emerge are at different point in life. Response to Joint Attention(RJA) and Initiation to Joint Attention(IJA). RJA attempts to follow the attention of others while IJA is responsible to direct the attention of others to their own perspective. These two joint attention mechanisms develop as early as six months in a child and take twelve months to fully mature.
Chapter 1:
ReplyDeleteThe author described the fundamental development in research through social features of autism spectrum. Many research studies have been reviewed to relate to the status of epiphenomena in many early models of ASD. By the early 1990s, Incorrectly studying ASD in developmental and observational research have been showed and proved by evidence; the study of autism based on a nonresponsive pattern of social behavior was inaccurate, and misleading. "Joint attention" was defined as human ability to coordinate our attention with that of other people. Observations of the relative speed and quality of joint attention development in preschool children have helped researchers define the category of autism. Patterns of symptom heterogeneity in ASD have been demonstrated by interaction studies of syndrome-specific and non-syndrome-specific determinants; symptom variability in ASD may reflect the nonlinear or complex determinant pathways of a dynamic system. Electroencephalographic (EEG) index, behavioral inhibition system (BIS), behavioral activation system (BAS) also were used in studies of Burnette et al. (2011).
Chapter 2:
Joint attention is brought into the present discussion through a dimensional approach to psychopathology via the recent systematic attempts by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). An alternative to the use of symptom-based categories of disorders in organizing clinical research is considered as the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC). The RDoC approach is
designed to identify the brain–behavior dimensions that are needed for precisely describing all facets of atypical mental development. A very comprehensive argument that joint attention is one of the vital cognitive and motivational functions the human brain has evolved to perform is also addressed. Comparing attention and joint attention showed that joint attention not only allows us toshare information with others, but also deepens or changes the encoding of stimulus information in both infants and adults in ways that are not observed when information is individually spotlighted. Therefore, joint attention is an important element of human social cognition (Kim & Mundy, 2012). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) was used as a benchmark for assessing autism in children, and yet the precise description of the social symptoms of ASD in DSM is still an evolving process. However, til the latest DSM was not yet clear on the role of joint attention, many of the “gold-standard” diagnostic and screening instruments for ASD emphasize joint attention measurement, at least among preschool children.
Article: A review of joint attention and social-cognitive brain systems in typical development and autism spectrum disorder
DeleteThis article reviewed recent literature on the neurodevelopment of joint attention. Based on literature, joint attention was supported and informed to be significant in the neurodevelopment of neural systems for human social cognition. By the age of 5 months, joint attention would be observed to assess the ability to adopt a common perspective with another person. Response to Joint Attention(RJA) and Initiation to Joint Attention(IJA) were also explained; RJA: ’ ability to follow the direction of attention of other people, and IJA: ability to spontaneously seek to direct the attention of others to share their experience of an object or event. In addition, comparative parametric studies of the different methods used across development such as optical imaging, resting state system activity with behavioral observations, and virtual joint attention emulation tasks using fMRI may also ultimately be necessary.
Jessica Yoo
ReplyDeleteChapters 1 & 2 Mundy Proofs
(A brief history of the concept of autism & The dimension of joint attention and ASD diagnosis)
In earlier years, Kanner’s perspective towards ASD was different from a dominant model of belief that early experience and interaction contributed more towards human mental development than biological aspects. Later, biological evidence was shown related to gender and family. DSM-III’s description of an ASD characteristic as a “pervasive lack of responsiveness to others” was challenged by many studies later on that children with autism displayed more social response as age increased. Even among those who are affected by Autism, the spectrum of the disorder is wide, and therefore should not be assumed to always carry the same characteristics. Each individual may display different symptoms which makes it harder for diagnosis and treatment (there are many other disorders that do not have a set measurement criterion, and instead relative). It is important that people understand ASD may be composed of multidimensional factors.
With both genetic and environmental factors, ASD can also be affected by neural network categorized into two behavioral systems: inhibition (BIS) and activation (BAS) systems. It has been studied that children with ASD who showed more active/approach tendencies displayed higher response to training.
It seems as if many people, to some degree, have broad autism phenotype. People who may come off as eccentric, one-of-a-kind, or peculiar may have much less extreme form of BAP or other mental disorders. Some may be barely surviving to fit into the “norm” of society or some may be doing just fine. Although these people fit into the “normal” category, should this be really ignored? Should they also be provided some kind of support or therapy/counseling? (personal thought)
The book also talks specifically about joint attention and how it is strictly viewed as one of social interaction and not a separate mental system under RDoC. While attention can be thought of as something we purposely attend to or decide to attend to, it is also an active continuing process through our information integration and process. People with ASD have hard time coordinating their attention with others, which may be due to difficulties in processing information with self-mind or making connections between the self-mind and surrounding information. It is crucial in social learning and cognitive development. In order to have a complete understanding of ASD, fundamental mechanisms of symptoms need to be further researched.
A review of joint attention and social-cognitive brain systems in typical development and autism spectrum disorder (Mundy, 2017)
DeleteThe article specifies the importance of inclusion of joint attention in current social-cognitive model. Through joint-attention, information is shared and therefore learning may be enhanced. It has been researched that join-attention contributes a significant amount to social cognition development in adults but much less for infants. Through imaging and EEG studies, it has been shown that response to joint attention behaviors starts to develop around 4-5 months. This demonstrates that joint attention plays a significant role in development in as early as infancy. Frontal and parietal cortices have been shown to be associated with response to join attention behaviors. Uncinate fasciculus, as well as amygdala also showed individual differences related to social-cognition. Initiate joint attention also showed to be associated with frontal dorsal and posterior cingulate. Through imaging studies, we will be able to gain more concise insight into social-cognitive development in relation to ASD’s wide-range degree of symptoms, and ultimately, richer indication of biomarkers.