Iconicity influences how effectively minimally verbal children with autism and ability-matched typically developing children use pictures as symbols in a search task.
Use color photos instead of cartoon icons for minimally verbal autistic learners—they understand them better.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team tested 24 minimally verbal kids with autism and 24 younger typical kids. Both groups had the same receptive language scores.
Each child played a hiding game. They saw a picture of a toy, then searched for the real toy hidden in a room. The pictures were color photos, black-and-white photos, or cartoon line drawings.
Kids got three kinds of pictures in random order. Researchers counted how often each child found the right toy.
What they found
Color photos won. Kids found the toy twice as often with color photos than with line drawings.
Receptive language score predicted success. The higher the score, the more accurate the search, no matter the diagnosis.
Autism diagnosis itself did not matter. When language level was the same, both groups used pictures equally well.
How this fits with other research
Wachob et al. (2015) seems to disagree. They added pictures to spoken instructions and saw no learning boost in autistic kids. The key difference is task type. David taught new rules; Calum only asked kids to match a picture to an object. Matching is easier, so iconicity helps.
Hsieh et al. (2014) extends the story. They tracked eyes while kids viewed PECS symbols and found typical looking patterns. Together the studies show autistic kids both look at and understand picture symbols normally when the pictures look like the real thing.
Girard et al. (2023) followed preschoolers over time. Early visual skills predicted later IQ, even in minimally verbal autism. Calum’s result fits here: good visual perception (spotting the real toy that matches the photo) links to better language and cognition.
Why it matters
Pick photos, not cartoons, for PECS cards, visual schedules, or choice boards. Color snapshots give the best chance that minimally verbal learners will understand what the picture means. Check receptive language first; if it is low, start with exact photos before fading to simpler icons.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Previous word learning studies suggest that children with autism spectrum disorder may have difficulty understanding pictorial symbols. Here we investigate the ability of children with autism spectrum disorder and language-matched typically developing children to contextualize symbolic information communicated by pictures in a search task that did not involve word learning. Out of the participant's view, a small toy was concealed underneath one of four unique occluders that were individuated by familiar nameable objects or unfamiliar unnamable objects. Children were shown a picture of the hiding location and then searched for the toy. Over three sessions, children completed trials with color photographs, black-and-white line drawings, and abstract color pictures. The results reveal zero group differences; neither children with autism spectrum disorder nor typically developing children were influenced by occluder familiarity, and both groups' errorless retrieval rates were above-chance with all three picture types. However, both groups made significantly more errorless retrievals in the most-iconic photograph trials, and performance was universally predicted by receptive language. Therefore, our findings indicate that children with autism spectrum disorder and young typically developing children can contextualize pictures and use them to adaptively guide their behavior in real time and space. However, this ability is significantly influenced by receptive language development and pictorial iconicity.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2015 · doi:10.1177/1362361314536634