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Drawing Impossible Entities: A Measure of the Imagination in Children with Autism, Children with Learning Disabilities, and Normal 4‐year‐olds
Author(s) -
Leevers Hilary J.,
Harris Paul L.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
journal of child psychology and psychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.652
H-Index - 211
eISSN - 1469-7610
pISSN - 0021-9630
DOI - 10.1111/1469-7610.00335
Subject(s) - autism , psychology , task (project management) , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , contrast (vision) , mental age , cognition , psychiatry , management , artificial intelligence , computer science , economics
Contemporary findings suggest that the imagination of autistic children is not as limited as was once thought. In contrast, Scott and Baron‐Cohen (1996) claim that children with autism are unable to draw pictures of impossible entities. An experiment showed that children with autism, children with moderate learning disabilities, and normal 4‐year‐olds were equally successful at identifying real and impossible pictures and at completing pictures to make them look either real or impossible. The previously reported inability to draw “impossible” pictures is unlikely to reflect an imaginative deficit and may instead result from a misunderstanding of the task or limitations in the executive abilities required to plan and draw an unusual picture for the first time.