Improving visual perspective-taking performance in children with autism spectrum conditions: Effects of embodied self-rotation and object-based mental rotation strategies.
Autistic kids can boost perspective-taking by learning to mentally rotate themselves OR the object—use whichever fits the child best.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Ni et al. (2021) worked with autistic children who struggled to see another person’s point of view.
The team taught two quick tricks: spin yourself in your mind, or spin the picture in your mind.
After a short lesson, kids tried perspective-taking tasks again to see if either trick helped.
What they found
Both tricks worked. Kids picked the right view more often after learning either one.
The gains were the same no matter which trick they used, so you can pick the child’s favorite.
How this fits with other research
LeBlanc et al. (2003) got the same skill boost with video modeling plus prizes. The new study shows you can reach the same goal without screens—just a quick mental rotation game.
Schmick et al. (2018) taught teens to name feelings after brief relational training. Together the papers say short, focused drills can grow social insight in autism, whether you target emotions or point-of-view.
Ozonoff et al. (2008) noticed babies later diagnosed with autism spin toys in odd ways. The new paper flips that early spin behavior into a teaching tool—turn the child’s natural rotation play into a strategy for reading minds.
Why it matters
You now have two low-prep choices: ask the child to “turn yourself” or “turn the card” in their head. Try both in one probe; keep the one the child likes. No extra materials, no long videos—just a quick prompt you can slip into natural play or table work.
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Pick a perspective-taking task, demo both rotation tricks, and let the child choose which one to use for the rest of the session.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
When answering how the same object might appear to others in different locations, people can provide answers by mentally putting themselves into another person's location using the embodied self-rotation strategy or by rotating the target object toward themselves using the object-based mental rotation strategy. In this study, after learning the embodied self-rotation or object-based mental rotation strategies, autistic children improved their visual perspective-taking performance, which is believed to be impaired or delayed in autistic individuals. We recruited 34 autistic children and an equal number of ability-matched typical children and examined their visual perspective-taking performance at baseline and after learning the embodied self-rotation and object-based mental rotation strategies. As previous visual perspective-taking and other social cognition interventions for autistic individuals have primarily focused on the embodied self-rotation strategy, showing moderate effectiveness and limited generalizability, we explored the effects of both embodied self-rotation and object-based mental rotation strategies for improving perspective-taking performance and discussed their implications in this study. The results showed that autistic children had a lower performance at baseline compared with typical children; however, they were still sensitive to both embodied self-rotation and object-based mental rotation strategies. Unlike typical children, who gained more from the embodied self-rotation strategy, autistic children benefited similarly from the two strategies. This suggests that there are multiple ways to helping autistic children overcome their difficulty in perspective-taking tasks. Future interventions for autistic children could consider combining various strategies that better suit their autistic traits.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2021 · doi:10.1177/1362361320949352