[Cognitive processing in autism spectrum disorders].

INTRODUCTION: Autism involves a basic impairment in social cognition. Abnormalities in social behavior coexist with aberrant attention and deficient language. In the attentional domain, attention to people and socially relevant stimuli is impaired. Also children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by impairments in face recognition and decreased attention to faces.

AIM: To review neurofunctional deficits underlying ASD by using event related potentials.

CONCLUSIONS: Event related potentials demonstrate that auditory orienting deficits in autism cannot be explained by sensory deficits and that the orienting deficit in autism might be speech-sound specific, suggesting deficits particularly in social orienting. In addition, children with ASD have a disordered pattern of brain responses to faces and objects at an early age.