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Why Do Autistic Individuals Show Superior Performance on the Block Design Task?
Author(s) -
Shah Amitta,
Frith Uta
Publication year - 1993
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/j.1469-7610.1993.tb02095.x
Subject(s) - psychology , autism , gestalt psychology , block design , task (project management) , orientation (vector space) , developmental psychology , coherence (philosophical gambling strategy) , block (permutation group theory) , developmental disorder , cognitive psychology , statistics , perception , neuroscience , mathematics , geometry , management , combinatorics , economics
— Systematic variations of the block design task were given to 20 autistic, 33 normal and 12 mildly retarded subjects Designs were contrasted which were either “whole” or segmented, rotated or un rotated, and which did or did not contain obliques. Only segmentation, but neither of the spatial orientation factors, revealed a significant group difference. Autistic subjects, regardless of age and ability, performed better than controls when presented with un segmented designs. This result suggests that they need less of the normally required effort to segment a gestalt, and thus supports the hypothesis of weak central coherence as a characteristic of information processing in autism.