自闭症儿童在辨别社交行为是否恰当的时候会很费力；即使他们判断正确，也解释不清其中的缘由。在10月17日出版的公共科学图书馆期刊PLoS One 上，来自卡内基梅隆大学的伊丽莎白?卡特和她的同事发表了一篇关于脑成像的研究论文，也论述了这一事实。
作者说，他们通过核磁共振成像研究，结果也验证了之前关于自闭症儿童语言缺陷的研究成果。在目前的调查中，科学家们给孩子们看两幅图片，分别询问自闭症儿童和正常儿童，哪一幅图上是坏小子（从社会观念判断），和哪一幅图上是户外的景象（个人判断）。两组儿童都回答正确，而自闭症儿童在回答期间，大脑中负责社交和语言的部分并不活跃。虽然在这里不需要说话，但正常儿童在回答的时候，大脑中负责语言的部分相对活跃一些。
在作者看来，他们的实验成果证实了文章开头的假设。她还说，使用语言频率的下降还会造成孩子总结、概括能力的降低。
“研究成果表明，帮助孩子们一起把脑中的知识翻译成口头的语言，是很重要的。”卡特说。（生物谷Bioon.com）
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0047241
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Is He Being Bad? Social and Language Brain Networks during Social Judgment in Children with Autism
Elizabeth J. Carter, Diane L. Williams, Nancy J. Minshew, Jill F. Lehman
Individuals with autism often violate social rules and have lower accuracy in identifying and explaining inappropriate social behavior. Twelve children with autism (AD) and thirteen children with typical development (TD) participated in this fMRI study of the neurofunctional basis of social judgment. Participants indicated in which of two pictures a boy was being bad (Social condition) or which of two pictures was outdoors (Physical condition). In the within-group Social–Physical comparison, TD children used components of mentalizing and language networks [bilateral inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), bilateral medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and bilateral posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS)], whereas AD children used a network that was primarily right IFG and bilateral pSTS, suggesting reduced use of social and language networks during this social judgment task. A direct group comparison on the Social–Physical contrast showed that the TD group had greater mPFC, bilateral IFG, and left superior temporal pole activity than the AD group. No regions were more active in the AD group than in the group with TD in this comparison. Both groups successfully performed the task, which required minimal language. The groups also performed similarly on eyetracking measures, indicating that the activation results probably reflect the use of a more basic strategy by the autism group rather than performance disparities. Even though language was unnecessary, the children with TD recruited language areas during the social task, suggesting automatic encoding of their knowledge into language; however, this was not the case for the children with autism. These findings support behavioral research indicating that, whereas children with autism may recognize socially inappropriate behavior, they have difficulty using spoken language to explain why it is inappropriate. The fMRI results indicate that AD children may not automatically use language to encode their social understanding, making expression and generalization of this knowledge more difficult.
