Cognitive strategies of designing in children with autism

Abstract

Superior block design abilities (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children) in children with autism are commonly regarded as peculiarities of their visual perception allowing easy identifying the specific features of the visual pattern. The aim of our study was to analyze reconstruction strategies in 4-11 years old children with autism (34 children) in comparison with typically developing children (38 children). The assessment of reconstruction strategy was based on the off-line analysis of video-records, and provided a quantitative index of the child’s bias to focus on the global configuration or the local features of the model throughout the performance of subtest “Triangles” from the Kaufmann Assessment Battery for Children. Results showed an abnormal bias in children with autism to concentrate on the local features of a model (color contrast and slope of a border between different elements of the pattern) and to ignore its global configuration. Being highly expressed this bias affects the child’s reconstruction abilities and leads to poor performance of the subtest.