Symbolic understanding of pictures in low-functioning children with autism: the effects of iconicity and naming.
Color photos alone boost symbolic understanding in low-functioning kids with autism—skip the labels and use color photos or drawings.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team worked with low-functioning children with autism. They showed each child three kinds of pictures: color photos, black-and-white line drawings, and abstract icons.
Some pictures came with spoken names, others stayed silent. The kids had to point to the picture that matched a hidden toy.
What they found
Color photos and drawings helped the children pick the right toy. Black-and-white or abstract icons did not.
Adding spoken names made no difference. The children understood the picture without any words.
How this fits with other research
Hartley et al. (2015) ran a similar search task and got the same result: color photos beat abstract icons. Together the studies show the effect is real, not tied to one game.
Wachob et al. (2015) seems to disagree. They added pictures to a learning lesson and saw no gain. The key difference is the job: symbolic matching versus new learning. Pictures help kids grasp what a symbol means, but they do not speed up later lessons.
Hsieh et al. (2014) found children with autism look at faces and objects inside pictures the same way typical kids do. This supports using photos in PECS or visual schedules; attention is not the problem.
Why it matters
Use color photos or clear drawings when you teach symbols. Skip the labels at first. A color photo of crackers teaches "cracker" faster than a black-and-white line icon. Save your voice for later lessons after the symbol is locked in.
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Swap any black-and-white PECS icons for color photos of the real item and present without speaking the name.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
This research investigated whether symbolic understanding of pictures in low-functioning children with autism is mediated by iconicity and language. In Experiment 1, participants were taught novel words paired with unfamiliar pictures that varied in iconicity (black-and-white line drawings, greyscale photographs, colour line drawings, colour photographs). Unlike mental-age matched typically developing peers, children with autism generally mapped words onto pictures rather than depicted referents, however, they generalised labels more frequently in colour picture conditions. In Experiment 2, children with autism categorised a line drawing with its referent, rather than another picture, regardless of whether it was named. Typically developing children only viewed pictures as symbols when they were labelled. Overall, symbolic understanding of pictures in children with autism is facilitated by iconicity (particularly colour), but not language.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2015 · doi:10.1007/s10803-013-2007-4