Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) sometimes have difficulties learning categories. Past computational work suggests that such deficits may result from atypical representations in cortical maps. Here we use neural networks to show that idiosyncratic transformations of inputs can result in the formation of feature maps that impair…

Neural network technology was compared with simultaneous and stepwise linear discriminant analysis in terms of their ability to classify and predict persons (n=138) as having autism or mental retardation. The neural network methodology was superior in both classifying groups and in generalizing to new cases that were not part of the training…

This study found that categorization strategy training resulted in increased performance on unidimensional, bidimensional, and tridimensional sorting tasks by 4 males (ages 12-16) with autism. Three subjects also showed improvements on generalization probes and maintenance of performance. (Author/JDD)