Caetextia

Many of the symptoms observed in patients with Asperger's can be attributed to caetextia. In order for someone to be considered contextually aware, they must be able to attach attention to and detach it from the interacting variables in a given situation. This implies active integration of sensory information gathered from the situation. It has been found that patients differ in their ability to perform these functions based on the dominant hemisphere of their brain. Some areas that are affected by ASD are the ability to understand and use non-verbal and verbal communication, behave in socially appropriate ways, flexible thinking, and under or over sensitivity to sensory stimuli. Context blindness has been speculated as having a relationship with other prominent neurocognitive theories of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) such as theory of mind, empathizing–systemizing, social coherence and executive function. == Example ==

A person with caetextia may look into a mirror to brush their hair but they never brush the back of their hair. This is because the image they saw in the mirror does not show the back of their head and they have not related this image to the bigger picture, or the context. Here, there is a difficulty viewing the situation from a different point of view or in a different context. == Related concept: context blindness (Vermeulen) ==

Independently of Griffin and Tyrrell, the Flemish clinical educationalist Peter Vermeulen developed a closely related concept under the name context blindness (Dutch: contextblindheid), which he used in Dutch-language work from 2007 onwards, in the book Autism as Context Blindness (2012), and in a peer-reviewed synthesis in Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities in 2015. Where Griffin and Tyrrell frame caetextia primarily in terms of the ability to maintain and switch between separate streams of attention, Vermeulen situates context blindness in the tradition of weak central coherence theory of Uta Frith and Francesca Happé, and defines it as a reduced spontaneous use of context in deriving meaning from stimuli, language, behaviour and situations. In later work, Vermeulen has linked context blindness to predictive processing accounts of the brain, drawing on the free energy principle of Karl Friston. The empirical status of Vermeulen's context-blindness hypothesis is mixed. A study by Souza and colleagues found that individuals with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder did make use of contextual information in visual short-term memory tasks, which the authors interpreted as evidence against a strict version of the hypothesis. == Evolutionary importance ==

Occurring through the whole autism spectrum is the inability to read context. Through evolutionary psychology, the importance of context when making decisions and performing behaviours can be seen in mammals. Mammals had to develop the ability to store memories of previous information and use this information to influence future encounters more efficiently. This enabled them to perform a risk analysis of different events. They had to make decisions based on the specific circumstances or context that they found themselves in as their survival may depend on it. To see context, we need to be able to see events from different viewpoints. It was previously believed that mammals simply responded mechanically to stimuli, however, research has concluded that there is a cognitive component involved in their response which involves prior experience. Mammals formed a mechanism capable of gauging risk by processing multiple streams of information whilst at the same time, unconsciously comparing similar, previous experiences. This is called ‘parallel processing’. The ability to effortlessly switch between separate streams of information can only be achieved when the brain can dissociate. This enables the individual to review what they know about something from previous experience whilst also paying attention to the present. == Alternative theories ==

The theory of social coherence suggests that, when carrying out tasks, autistic people fail to process information for context-dependent meaning. Some researchers propose that in ASD, there is a reduced ability to read other people's minds and use this to predict other people's behaviour. Baron-Cohen suggests that thinking about what others are thinking is essential for engaging in social activity as it underpins our ability to learn from each other and cooperate. Research suggests that theory of mind is either absent or delayed in autistic individuals and this can explain their difficulty with social interactions. However, some 21st-century studies have shown that the results of some studies of theory of mind tests on autistic people may be misinterpreted based on the double empathy problem, which proposes that rather than autistic people specifically having trouble with theory of mind, autistic people and non-autistic people have equal difficulty understanding one-another due to their neurological differences. Studies have shown that autistic adults perform better in theory of mind tests when paired with other autistic adults as well as possibly autistic close family members. Academics who acknowledge the double empathy problem also propose that it is likely autistic people understand non-autistic people to a higher degree than vice-versa, due to the necessity of functioning in a non-autistic society. == The link between ASD and psychosis ==

It has been proposed that caetextia may account for both psychosis and ASD. REM sleep, which normally accounts for 80 percent of foetal sleep, is greatly reduced in autistic children. REM sleep is also key to understanding caetextia. Mammals needed to develop the ability to control impulses that would result in a waste of energy such as pursuing every sound or movement. The development of the ability to suppress impulses that were not in the mammal’s survival interests also bought another requirement: the need to devise a mechanism enabling discharge of the emotional arousal caused by unexpressed impulses. This would allow them to restore an emotional equilibrium and prevent these impulses from being permanently inhibited. This led to REM state of dreaming, to discharge emotional arousal not acted upon. This leads to the overarching theme: that mammals had to learn to make decisions based on context. The REM state in dreaming is caetextic as we have no context in dreams. == Physiological evidence for parallel processing ==

As the human brain became more sophisticated, the hemispheres of the brain developed specialisations. Language and structured thought primarily uses the left hemisphere and imaginative thinking uses the right hemisphere. People who cannot parallel process tend to rely on one type of thinking – thinking by random association or logical thinking. Left brain caetextia relies on logical thinking. Right brain caetextia relies on random association. There is physiological evidence for the existence of parallel processing using neuro-imaging techniques of the brain’s default network. When the brain is not engaged with specific outward activity, it uses 30 percent more calories than when it focused inwards, this includes daydreaming, thinking about the past or future and perspective taking. This energy usage has been tracked to the default network. It has been shown that the default network is used in inwards thinking but is switched off in outwards thinking. The default system does not switch on in those with ASD and fails to switch off in psychosis. The terms left- and right-brain caetextia are oversimplifications. It is now more accurate to see this in terms of default systems. A person with right-brain caetextia is excessively in the default system. Conversely, people with left-brained caetextia are ‘locked out’ of the default system and so unable to relate their current reality to the deeper context in which they exist. == See also ==