We report a study of the depiction of partial occlusion and its relationship with field independence (FI) in children with ASD. Nineteen ASD children and 29 TD children (5;6—10;0) attempted to copy two 3D occluded scenes, and also selected the ‘best’ depiction of these scenes in drawings by others. ASD children were not significantly different from controls on FI but were significantly delayed in partial occlusion drawing and selection, independently of chronological age (CA), nonverbal mental age (NVMA) and FI. The results suggest that the depiction of partial occlusion in children with ASD is not qualitatively distinct from that in children with typical development but is significantly and specifically delayed.
Baron-Cohen, S. ( 2002) ‘The Extreme Male Brain Theory of Autism’ , Trends in Cognitive Sciences6(6): 248-254.
2.
Bennetto, L., Pennington, B.F., and Rogers, S.J. ( 1996) ‘Intact and Impaired Memory Functions in Autism’ , Child Development67(4): 1816-1835.
3.
Biro, S., and Russell, J. ( 2001) ‘The Execution of Arbitrary Procedures by Children with Autism’, Development and Psychopathology13: 97-110.
4.
Booth, R., Charlton, R., Hughes, C., and Happe, F. ( 2003) ‘Disentangling Weak Coherence and Executive Dysfunction: Planning Drawing in Autism and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder’ , Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B - Biological Sciences358(1430): 387-392.
5.
Charman, T. and Baron-Cohen, S. ( 1993) ‘Drawing Development in Autism: The Intellectual to Visual Realism Shift’, British Journal of Developmental Psychology11: 171-185.
6.
Chen, F., Lemonnier, E., Lazartigues, A., and Planche, P. ( 2008) ‘Non-Superior Disembedding Performance in Children with High-Functioning Autism and its Cognitive Style Account’, Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders2(4): 739-752.
7.
Cox, M.V. ( 1978) ‘Order of the Acquisition of Perspective-Taking Skills’, Developmental Psychology14(4): 421-422.
8.
Cox, M.V. ( 1981) ‘One Thing Behind Another: Problems of Representation in Children’s Drawing’, Educational Psychology1(4): 275-287.
9.
Cox, M.V. ( 1985) ‘One object behind another: young children’s use of array-specific or view-specific representations’, in Freeman, N.H. & Cox, M.V. (eds) Visual Order: the Nature and Development of Pictorial Representation. Cambridge University Press:Cambridge.
10.
Cox, M.V. ( 1986) The Child’s Point of View: The Development of Cognition and Language. New York: St Martin’s Press.
11.
Cox, S. ( 2005) ‘Intention and Meaning in Young Children’s Drawing’, International Journal of Art and Design Education24(2): 115-125.
12.
Crook, C. ( 1984) ‘Factors Influencing the Use of Transparency in Children’s Drawing’, British Journal of Developmental Psychology2: 231-221.
13.
Eames, K. and Cox, M.V. ( 1994) ‘Visual Realism in the Drawings of Autistic, Down’s Syndrome and Normal Children’, British Journal of Development Psychology12: 235-239.
14.
Eliot, J., Hardy, R.C., and Burlingame, K. ( 1984) ‘Reconsidering the Failure Rule for the Children’s Embedded Figures Test’, Perceptual and Motor Skills59: 21-22.
15.
Fein, D., Lucci, D., and Waterhouse, L. ( 1990) ‘Brief Report: Fragmented Drawings in Autistic Children’ , Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders20(2): 263-269.
16.
Freeman, N. ( 1980) Strategies of Representation in Young Children: Analysis of Spatial Skills and Drawing Processes. London: Academic Press.
17.
Freeman, N., Eiser, C., and Sayers, J. ( 1977) ‘Children’s Strategies in Producing Three-Dimensional Relationships on a Two-Dimensional Surface’, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology23: 305-314.
18.
Frith, U. ( 2003) Autism: Explaining the Enigma, Second Edition. Blackwell Publishing: USA.
19.
Halford, G.S. ( 1993) Children’s understanding: The development of mental models. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
20.
Happé, F. ( 1999) ‘Autism: Cognitive Deficit or Cognitive Style? ’ Trends in Cognitive Sciences3(6): 216-222.
21.
Happé, F., Booth, R., Charlton R., and Hughes, C. ( 2006) ‘Executive Function Deficits in Autism Spectrum Disorders and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Examining Profiles across Domains and Ages’, Brain and Cognition61: 25-39.
22.
Happé, F., and Frith, U. ( 2006) ‘The Weak Coherence Account: Detail-Focused Cognitive Style in Autism Spectrum Disorders’, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders36: 5-25.
23.
Hughes, C., Russell, J., and Robbins, T.W. ( 1994) ‘Specific Planning Deficit in Autism: Evidence for a Central Executive Dysfunction’, Neuropsychologia32: 477-492.
24.
Ingram, N., and Butterworth, G. ( 1989) ‘The Young Child’s Representation of Depth of Drawing: Process and Product’, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology47: 356-369.
25.
Jolliffe, T., and Baron-Cohen, S. ( 1997) ‘Are People with Autism and Asperger Syndrome Faster than Normal on the Embedded Figures Test?’ Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry38(5): 527-534.
26.
Kaland, N., Mortensen, E.L., and Smith, L. ( 2007) ‘Disembedding Performance in Children and Adolescents with Asperger Syndrome or High-Functioning Autism’, Autism11(1): 81-92.
27.
Lewis, V., and Boucher, J. ( 1991) ‘Skill, Content and Generative Strategies in Autistic Children’s Drawings’, British Journal of Developmental Psychology9: 393-416.
28.
Liben, L., and Belknap, B. ( 1981) ‘Intellectual Realism: Implications for Investigations for Perceptual Perspective-Taking in Young Children’, Child Development52: 921-94.
29.
Light, P., and Nix, C. ( 1983) ‘"Own View" versus "Good View" in a Perspective-Taking Task’, Child Development54(2): 480-483.
30.
Light, P.H., and Humphreys, J. ( 1981) ‘Internal Spatial Relations in Young Children’s Drawings’, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology31: 521-530.
31.
Light, P.H., and MacIntosh, E. ( 1980) ‘Depth Relationships in Young Children’s Drawings’ , Journal of Experimental Child Psychology30: 79-87.
32.
McGonigle-Chalmers, M., Bodner, K., Fox-Pitt, A., and Nicholson, L. ( 2007) ‘Size Sequencing as a Window on Executive Control in Children with Autism and Asperger’s Syndrome’, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders27 (Epub).
33.
Morgan, B., Mayberry, M., and Durkin, K. ( 2003) ‘Weak Central Coherence, Poor Joint Attention, and Low Verbal Ability: Independent Deficits in Early Autism’, Developmental Psychology39: 646-656.
34.
Morra, S., Angi, A., and Tomat, L. ( 1996) ‘Planning, Encoding and Overcoming Conflict in Partial Occlusion Drawing: A Neo-Piagetian Model and an Experimental Analysis’ , Journal of Experimental Child Psychology61: 276-301.
35.
Morra, S. ( 2002) ‘On the Relationship between Partial Occlusion Drawing, M-Capacity and Field Independence’, British Journal of Developmental Psychology20: 421-438.
36.
Morra, S., Gobbo, Marini, Z., and Sheese, R. ( 2008) Cognitive Development. Neo-Piagetian Perspectives. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum.
37.
Pascual-Leone, J. ( 1989) ‘An Organismic Process of Witkin’s Field-Dependence-Independence’ , in T. Globerson and T. Zelniker (eds), Cognitive Style and Cognitive Development. The Tel Aviv Annual Workshop in Human Development, New Jersey: Ablex, Vol. 3: 36-70.
38.
Pascual-Leone, J., and Baillargeon, R. ( 1994) ‘Developmental Measurement of Mental Attention’ , International Journal of Behavioral Development, 17(1): 161-200.
39.
Pillow, B.H., and Flavell, J.H. ( 1985) ‘Intellectual Realism: The Role of Children’s Interpretations of Pictures and Perceptual Verbs’, Child Development56: 664-670.
40.
Rajendran, G. and Mitchell (2007) ‘Cognitive Theories of Autism’, Developmental Review27: 224-231.
41.
Russell, J. ( 1997) Autism as an Executive Disorder. New York: Oxford University Press.
42.
Shah, A., and Frith, U. ( 1983) ‘An Islet of Ability in Autistic Children: A Research Note’, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry24: 613-620.
43.
Shah, A., and Frith, U. ( 1993) ‘Why Do Autistic Individuals Show Superior Performance on the Block Design Task?’ Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry34: 1351-1364.
44.
Slater, A., Morison, V.Somers, M., Mattock, A., Brown, E., and Taylor, D. ( 1990). ‘Newborn and Older Infants’ Perception of Partly Occluded Objects’, Infant Behaviour and Development13: 33-49.
45.
Taguchi, M., and Hirai, S. ( 2003) ‘Planning and Drawing of Occluded Objects by Young Children’, Perceptual and Motor Skills96: 909-914.
46.
Wang, L., Mottron, L., Peng, D., Berthiaume, C., and Dawson, M. ( 2007) ‘Local Bias and Local-to-Global Interference without Global Deficit: A Robust Finding in Autism under Various Conditions of Attention , Exposure Time, and Visual Angle’, Cognitive Neuropsychology24(5): 550-574.
47.
Wechsler, D. ( 2003) Wechsler Pre-School and Primary Scale of Intelligence - Third Edition. London : HarcourtAssessment.
48.
Wechsler, D. ( 2004) Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children - Fourth Edition. London: Harcourt Assessment.
49.
Wertheimer, M. ( 1938) in W.D. Ellis (ed), A Source Book of Gestalt Psychology. London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Tribner.
50.
Witkin, H.A. ( 1950) ‘Individual Differences in Ease of Perception of Embedded Figures’, Journal of Personality19: 1-15.
51.
Witkin, H.A., Oltman, P.K., Raskin, E., and Karp, S.A. ( 1971) A Manual for the Embedded Figures Test. Consulting Psychologist Press: California.
