Learning new relational categories by children with autism spectrum disorders, children with typical development and children with intellectual disabilities: effects of comparison and familiarity on systematicity.
Comparison and familiar items alone do not help autistic kids shift from perceptual to relational thinking.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers tested the kids. Thirty had autism, 30 had intellectual disability, 30 were typical.
Each child played a matching game on a computer. They saw pictures and picked which ones went together.
Some rounds used familiar objects like cups and shoes. Some rounds let kids compare sets side-by-side. The goal was to see if kids could stop picking by looks and start picking by relationship.
What they found
Typical kids and kids with IDD switched to relational choices when they saw comparisons or familiar items.
Kids with autism kept picking by color or shape even with extra help. Familiar things and side-by-side views did not move them to abstract thinking.
How this fits with other research
Leung et al. (2014) saw the same pattern in memory tasks. Typical kids used big-picture cues; autistic kids did not. Together the studies show a broad "weak central coherence" style in autism.
Shojaeian et al. (2022) added Down syndrome to the mix. Like our study, typical kids topped both clinical groups, showing the three-group design is useful across domains.
Hartley et al. (2015) looks like a contradiction at first. Their minimally verbal autistic kids succeeded with clear photos. The difference is task type: using a concrete picture is easier than forming an abstract category.
Why it matters
You cannot assume that showing related items side-by-side will teach categories to autistic learners. Add extra steps: model the rule, give many exemplars, use direct prompting, and check generalization. Build abstraction slowly instead of hoping comparison alone will do the trick.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Systematicity principle, used during analogical reasoning, enables building up deeper abstract concepts as part of structure mapping. The purpose of this study was to investigate structure mapping processes that occur during acquisition of new relational categories and to identify the learning patterns and systematicity of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) compared with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) and typical development (TD). Comparison effect and level of familiarity were used to investigate structural mapping processes. METHODS: Three groups of 24 children participated in the study. Using a computer program, participants were asked to select a perceptual or relational choice based on one or two standards using illustrations depicting new relational categories in various spatial configurations. Known, partially known and unknown illustrations were used in depicting three levels of familiarity. RESULTS: All three groups selected perceptual choices when one standard was available (no comparison). However, when two standards were available, enabling a comparison, children with IDD and TD increased their tendency for selecting abstract relational categories, while children with ASD did not change their preference and continued selecting perceptual choices. Level of familiarity increased selection of relational choices among children with TD and IDD but not among children with ASD. CONCLUSIONS: Systematicity principle was evident mostly in the selection of relational choices by children with TD and IDD when the illustrations were known or partially known. Hence, even when an opportunity to compare and to use previously known information was available, structure mapping processes and systematicity were implemented to align information among children TD and IDD but failed to assist the learning of new relational categories among children with ASD.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2019 · doi:10.1111/jir.12598