An Experimental Study On The Perception Of Threat In Children With Autistic Spectrum Disorders

Threat perception is the mental process in which an individual assesses whether or not the environment encountered poses any danger or negative stimulus, and thus adopts a certain cognitive or behavioral strategy to cope with possible stresses. It is generally viewed as an adaptive process in the individual’s adjustment to the environment. During these years, the cognition and emotion study of children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) has developed into an important issue in special education clinic research. As the basis of an individual’s survival and security, faster search and threat perception and rational response is a crucial part in children’s social development, and especially a core premise of their quality of life. Therefore, an systematic exploration for the threat perception among children with ASD can on one hand deepen the understanding of those children, aiding the cognitive study of autitic children and enriching its theoretical principle, while on the other hand probe into the application of threat perception in special education, expanding the frontier of clinic intervention and eventually helping the rehabilitation of children with ASD.Altogether, this research is composed of six chapters.Chapter One provides the research background, which could be further divided into three sections:first, a brief introduction to the research subject; second, clear definitions of the three core concepts---autistic spectrum disorders, perception of threat, and threat advantage effect; third, systematic literature on the biological evolution, research method, neurophysiological mechanism and major influential factors of threat perception, and on the characteristics of cognitive processing among people with ASD and its relevant theoretical hypotheses, offering some implications for the conduct of further research.Chapter Two puts forward the research supposition, which states from the macroscopic view the research’s general information, design framework, focus and difficulty, and creative features.Chapter Three details the experimental study, in which the researcher makes an inquiry into the existence and features of the perception of threat. Specifically, the seven serial experiments in such tests as color-picture test, environment-picture test, expression-picture test, and dynamic video test.In Experiment1, children with ASD are found distributing differing degrees of attention resources (eye movement differences) to different stimulating sources in the color-picture test. It suggests that they have an almost complete physiological mechanism, which is the premise of the whole research. Nevertheless, can it be applicable to a relatively complex enrionment? Experiment2features a combination of "snake" and "flowef" as the stimulating sources. The researcher observed from the experiment that children with ASD enjoyed a search advantage for negative targets, demonstrated noticeable threat pop out effect, and showed a fixed-attention to picures displaying an all-threating negative environment. Do such features also exist in expression processing given those children’s disorders in interpersonal communication and emotional behavior? Experiments3-5thoroughly studied those children’s perceptual speed, span and style when posed with expression threats by means of a standardized expression-picture test composed of neutral, happy and angry faces. In a control study, children with ASD in Experiment3also displayed an emotion pop out effect, but the difference is that those children had a processing advantage for happy faces. They showed a positive pereption bias, and remarkably affected by the show time of stimulate materials. Experiment found out that those children’s threat perception was under the influence of the matrix size, and had an unstable pop out effect in the process of threat target searching, which means they adpoted parallel processing and serial processing methods when faced with perception tasks. In Experiment5, the researcher constantly changed the directions of the faces, but found no face inversion effect among the children, which is a suggection that their expression cognition characterizes feature processing. Nevertheless, in the perception of angry faces, those children had an isolated face inversion effect, which again proves the existence of a unique, complicated and greatly-differing perception style among children with ASD.Do children with ASD also have such threat perception features demonstrated in static picture tests in the most common dynamic situation of their daily life? Experiments6and7studied the eye movement in dynamic video tests. The findings proved not only that the children had positive perception bias in expression tests, but also that the children’s threat perception was also influenced by such factors as video (a cartoon or a real person), surrounding (positive or negative), and location (indoor or outdoor). Compared with IQ matching normal children, in dynamic video tests children with ASD had a less effective threat perception and more obvious difficulties in processing emotions.Chapter Four focuses on clinic application. The section is a preliminary exploration for the clinic application of the research findings in the cognitive training, safety eduction, self-help, interpersonal commucation, and emotional development of children with ASD, and hence making some suggestions on strategic intervention.Chapter Five is a comprehensive discussion, in which the author comprehensively discusses the existence, level, and features (including test-based difference, biological maturity influence and cognitive processing method) of threat perception among children with ASD, and its clinic application. In addition, the author highlights the three intervention principles, namely integration, structure, and visual support.The last chapter is the conclusion. In this section, the author lists the major reseach findings of the existence, characteristics and clinic applications of threat perception, meanwhile, in a systematic way, reflects on the limitations in terms of sample selection, research method, and clinic study. Finally, the dissertation looks ahead to the multi-disciplinary and thorough studies in the future, with the aim to better serve the clinic recovery of children with ASD.