Problem-solving styles in autism spectrum disorder and the development of higher cognitive functions.
Adults with ASD often solve problems in a rigid, cue-heavy way, so check cognitive style before teaching higher-order skills.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Burrows et al. (2018) watched adults with autism solve a block puzzle. The puzzle is called the Vygotsky Blocks Test. You have to sort blocks by secret rules you invent yourself.
They compared the adults to typically developing adults. They counted errors, cues needed, and new ideas.
What they found
The ASD group made more errors. They needed more hints. They created fewer new sorting rules.
Their style was concrete, not imaginative. They relied less on playful talking-through.
How this fits with other research
Dudley et al. (2019) extends this picture. The same rigid style links to weaker executive brain networks in middle-aged men with ASD. Behavior plus brain data match.
Matson et al. (2008) looked at IQ first. They showed IQ changes how autism symptoms look in adults with ID. A et al. now add that, even when IQ is in the adult range, problem-solving style stays concrete.
Pastor-Cerezuela et al. (2020) seems to clash. They found sensory issues, not style, predict poor executive scores in kids. The gap is age and task. Kids in school hit sensory walls; adults in quiet labs show thinking-style limits.
Why it matters
Before you teach planning, daily living, or social inference to an adult with ASD, run a quick puzzle test. If they need many cues and stick to one rule, switch your plan. Use visual scripts, break steps smaller, and reward flexible tries. Do not assume IQ alone tells you how they will solve new problems.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Open session with a five-block sort task; note how many hints they need, then shape flexible sorting with praise for new rules.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
The Vygotsky Blocks Test assesses problem-solving styles within a theoretical framework for the development of higher mental processes devised by Vygotsky. Because both the theory and the associated test situate cognitive development within the child's social and linguistic context, they address conceptual issues around the developmental relation between language and thought that are pertinent to development in autism. Our aim was to document the performance of adults with autism spectrum disorder on the Vygotsky Blocks Test, and our results showed that they made more errors than the typically developing participants and that these errors correlated with performance IQ. The autism spectrum disorder group also required more cues than the typically developing group to discern the conceptual structure of the blocks, a pattern that correlated with Autism Diagnostic Observational Schedule-Communication and Imagination/Creativity sub-scales. When asked to categorize the blocks in new ways, the autism spectrum disorder participants developed fewer principles on which to base new categorizations, which in contrast to the typically developing group correlated with verbal IQ and with the Imagination/Creativity sub-scale of the ADOS. These results are in line with a number of existing findings in the autism spectrum disorder literature and confirm that conceptualization in autism spectrum disorder seems to rely more on non-verbal and less on imaginative processes than in typically developing individuals. The findings represent first steps to the possibility of outlining a testable account of psychological development in autism spectrum disorder that integrates verbal, non-verbal and social factors into the transition from elementary to higher level processes.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2018 · doi:10.1177/1362361317691044