The findings confirm our hypothesis that high-functioning adults with autism have

a specific difficulty with exception-handling during reasoning. It is suggested that defeasible reasoning is also involved in other cognitive domains. Implications for neural underpinnings of reasoning and autism are discussed. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“The semantic and phonemic fluency A-1210477 purchase performance of adults with high functioning autism (HFA), Asperger syndrome and a neurotypical control group were compared. All participants were matched for age and verbal ability. Results showed that the participants with HFA were significantly impaired in their performance of both semantic fluency VX-689 supplier tasks and the phonemic fluency task using the letter M. The Asperger group was only impaired in their performance

of the semantic fluency task ‘professions’. The social components of the ‘professions’ task may have influenced the performance of the two disorder groups for this subtest negatively. The fluency deficits could not be attributed to a lack of the use of strategies or to difficulties in switching between strategies. The impairment in two of the three verbal fluency subtests in the HFA group can be attributed to the relatively low processing speed found in this group. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“Over the last 20 years neuroscientists have learned a great deal about the ventral and dorsal object processing pathways in the adult brain, yet little is known about the functional development of these pathways. The present research assessed the extent to which different patterns of neural activation, as measured by changes in blood volume and oxygenation, are observed in infant visual and temporal cortex in response to events that involve processing of featural differences or spatiotemporal discontinuities. Infants aged 6.5 months were tested. Increased neural activation was observed in visual cortex in response

to a featural-difference and a spatiotemporal-discontinuity event. In addition, increased neural activation was observed in temporal cortex in response to the featural-difference but not the spatiotemporal-discontinuity event. The outcome of this experiment reveals Dynein early functional specialization of temporal cortex and lays the foundation for future investigation of the maturation of object processing pathways in humans. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“Cognitive control theory suggests conflict effects are reduced following high-relative to low-conflict trials. Such reactive adjustments in control, frequently termed “”conflict adaptation effects,”" indicate a dynamic interplay between regulative and evaluative components of cognitive control necessary for adaptable goal-directed behavior.