Children with autism lack visual skills required for independence

February, 2011

Autism is popularly associated with intense awareness of systematic regularities, but a new study shows that the skill displayed in computer tasks is not available in real-world tasks.

Contrary to previous laboratory studies showing that children with autism often demonstrate outstanding visual search skills, new research indicates that in real-life situations, children with autism are unable to search effectively for objects. The study, involving 20 autistic children and 20 normally-developing children (aged 8-14), used a novel test room, with buttons on the floor that the children had to press to find a hidden target among multiple illuminated locations. Critically, 80% of these targets appeared on one side of the room.

Although autistics are generally believed to be more systematic, with greater sensitivity to regularities within a system, such behavior was not observed. Compared to other children, those with autism were slower to pick up on the regularities that would help them choose where to search. The slowness was not due to a lack of interest — all the children seemed to enjoy the game, and were keen to find the hidden targets.

The findings suggest that those with ASD have difficulties in applying the rules of probability to larger environments, particularly when they themselves are part of that environment.

Reference: 

[2055] Pellicano, E., Smith A. D., Cristino F., Hood B. M., Briscoe J., & Gilchrist I. D.
(2011).  Children with autism are neither systematic nor optimal foragers.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 108(1), 421 - 426.

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