Aditi Arora

Kessler Foundation · Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation

Background Autism is characterised not only by impaired social cognitive ‘empathising’ but also by superior rule-based ‘systemising’. These cognitive domains intertwine within the categorical diagnosis of autism, yet behavioural genetics suggest largely independent heritability, and separable brain mechanisms. We sought to determine whether quantit...

The purpose of this study was to assess differences in negative consequences resulting from pandemic-related school closures between autistic and neurotypical children. We predicted that more negative consequences overall would be reported for children with autism compared to neurotypical children. We also expected to observe differences in the typ...

Hubs emerge in structural and resting state network analysis as areas highly connected to other parts of the brain and have been shown to respond to several task domains in functional imaging studies. A cognitive explanation for this multi-functionality is still wanting. We propose, that hubs subserve domain-general meta-cognitive functions, releva...

Mental Files are devices used to track objects and store information about them. This approach has been used to tackle a variety of philosophical puzzles, and was recently used to explain children’s understanding of perspective taking in false belief tasks, dual identity, and alternative naming tasks. In this symposium we focus on the contribution...

Perspective taking is ubiquitous in everyday life and an important sub-process of theory of mind (ToM) tasks. Perspective taking is an ability to put oneself into another perspective and realize that the other person has or may have a different perspective than one’s own. The notion of perspective is linked to the notion of representation and modes...

In visual perspective taking (vPT) one has to concern oneself with what other people see and how they see it. Since seeing is a mental state, developmental studies have discussed vPT within the domain of “theory of mind (ToM)” but imaging studies have not treated it as such. Based on earlier results from several meta-analyses, we tested for the ove...

People in everyday life commonly use identity statements such as “Mr. Müller is the lawyer,” and refer to someone by name, profession, nationality etc. Empirical research and theoretical evidence show that, by using different names we assign different identities and perspectives to the same object (e.g. calling a cat as kitty or an animal). In my f...

We investigate the theory that the left inferior parietal lobe (IPL) is closely associated with tracking potential differences of perspective. Developmental studies find that perspective tasks are mastered at around 4 years of age. Our first study, meta-analyses of brain imaging studies shows that perspective tasks specifically activate a region in...

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