Autism, New Music Technologies and Cognition

Central coherence accounts of autism have shown dysfunction in the processing of local versus global information that may be the source of symptoms in social behavior, communication and repetitive behavior. An application was developed to measure cognitive abilities in central coherence tasks as part of a music composition task. The application was evaluated in collaboration with the Spotlight Program, an interdisciplinary social pragmatics program for children with Asperger's syndrome. This research indicates that it is possible to embed cognitive measure as part of a novel music application. Implications for current treatment interventions, and longitudinal experimentation designs are presented. Thesis supervisor: Tod Machover Title: Professor of Music and Media