How Do Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Encode and Reproduce Visuospatial Stimuli?: Investigation into Visuospatial Processing Abilities and Styles

Abstract

Objective The purpose of this study was to examine the visuospatial processing abilities of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) using the Rey Osterrieth Complex Figure (ROCF).Methods One-hundred thirty-four children with ASD [mean age (MA)=113.56 months], 150 siblings of children with ASD (MA= 111.67 months), and 55 typically developing (TD) children (MA=109.02 months) were included in this study. During their one-time visit, participants completed the ROCF, various autism diagnostic assessments, and the Korean-Leiter International Performance ScaleRevised. Repeated-measures Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) and post-hoc Tukey-Kramer comparisons were computed to compare the ROCF scores. Partial correlations and multiple regressions were computed to examine the association between ROCF scores and the severity of autistic symptoms, as measured by the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R) among children with ASD.Results There were significant main effects of the analysis group in Structural and Incidental Accuracy, Error, and Style. More siblings than TD children drew in a part-oriented way, but the performance of the sibling group was comparable or superior to that of the TD group in all parameters. Social Interaction scores of children with ASD were significantly associated with Organization scores in Copy condition. Whether or not a child drew in the Part-Oriented style significantly predicted his/her repetitive and restricted behavior scores.Conclusion The findings add to the evidence for altered visuospatial processing patterns of ASD as a potential inherent and genetic trait and suggest that this particular cognitive style should not be considered as a deficit. Educational and theoretical implications are discussed.

Visual Influences on Auditory Behavioral, Neural, and Perceptual Processes: A Review

“…This dichotomy does not appear to be unique to the auditory system, as children with ASD show comparable neural and behavioral signatures in discriminating first-order (e.g., luminance-defined) visual stimuli, but perform worse than TD controls in discriminating second-order (e.g., texture-defined) stimuli (Rivest et al 2013). Children with ASD have also been shown to trend toward local processing requirements in embedded figure (Manjaly et al 2007) and visual construction tasks (Kim et al 2020). These abnormalities in auditory and visual pattern formation are likely to play a key contributory role to the well-established difficulties in higher-order cognitive processes that accompany autism, such as the core symptom of impaired social communication.…”

The Effect of Comorbid Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Symptoms on Face Memory in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Insights from Transdiagnostic Profiles

“…Several causes could be responsible for their diverse behavioral presentation, and the distinct anomalous social visual attention pattern is a relevant issue yet to be explored in depth [67]. Patients with ASD have shown local processing preference on encoding visual information, and had difficulty in adopting chunking strategies to integrate the visual details [68][69][70]. Meanwhile, meta-analysis indicated that using a visual reminder, as a form of compensatory processing, may help to improve memory encoding and further enhance visual memory competence [71].…”