Visuospatial processing in children with autism: no evidence for (training-resistant) abnormalities.
Brief tangram practice erases small visuospatial gaps between autism and typical kids.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Chabani et al. (2014) gave kids with and without autism the same tangram puzzles.
Half the kids practiced on a computer. The other half practiced face-to-face with a tutor.
After a short training block the team checked if the autism group still scored lower.
What they found
At first the autism group was only a hair behind.
After either kind of practice that tiny gap vanished.
The authors call the difference “training-resistant” because it did not resist training at all.
How this fits with other research
Cardillo et al. (2022) looked like they disagreed. They saw clear visuospatial problems in autism youth doing a different drawing task. The tasks are different: tangram puzzles versus copying a complex figure. Different tasks, different answers — no real fight.
McGrath et al. (2012) also seemed to clash. They found autism kids solved mental-rotation puzzles faster, not slower. Again, the test changed: rotating objects in your head is not the same as fitting puzzle pieces.
Edgin et al. (2005) backs Ellahe. That older paper already said spatial skills in autism are “intact, not superior,” setting the stage for the new result.
Why it matters
You can stop assuming autism means fixed visual-spatial deficits. A quick round of tangram games, on a tablet or with you, can level the field. Use this when you need a fast confidence boost before map work, handwriting, or STEM tasks that lean on seeing how parts fit together.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) have been assumed to show evidence of abnormal visuospatial processing, which has been attributed to a failure to integrate local features into coherent global Gestalts and/or to a bias towards local processing. As the available data are based on baseline performance only, which does not provide insight into cognitive/neural plasticity and actual cognitive potential, we investigated how training-resistant possible visuospatial processing differences between children with and without ASD are. In particular, we studied the effect of computerized versus face-to-face visuospatial training in a group of normally intelligent children with ASD and typically developing children as control. Findings show that (a) children with and without ASD do not differ much in visuospatial processing (as assessed by a tangram-like task) and the few differences we observed were all eliminated by training; (b) training can improve visuospatial processing (equally) in both children with ASD and normally developing children; and (c) computer-based and face-to-face training was equally effective.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2014 · doi:10.1007/s10803-014-2107-9