Drawing Firmer Conclusions: Autistic Children Show No Evidence of a Local Processing Bias in a Controlled Copying Task.
Alastair D Smith, Lorcan Kenny, Anna Rudnicka and 2 others
PMID 27535754WHAT IT FOUND
Copying accuracy was similar in autistic and typical children.
Both groups were less accurate when corners were skewed, and there was no sign of a detail-focused copying bias.
Key findings
01Autistic and typical children showed similar global angle error, and angle error was higher when corners were skewed.
02Autistic and typical children showed similar local copying accuracy, and most copies were accurate at the local level.
03Autistic children were faster on a hidden-figures test, but this was not accompanied by better local copying accuracy.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The study included 21 autistic children and 21 typical children, so it cannot support broad claims about all autistic children. Most local drawing scores were very high, leaving little room to detect small group differences. The task was a laboratory copying task, not a therapy outcome or functional assessment. Groups were formed by diagnosis rather than random assignment, and autism is heterogeneous. Drawing time was not recorded, so speed of copying was not measured. The skewed condition also introduced oblique lines, so reduced accuracy may not be only about lost global grouping.
Declared interests
The study was funded by the Experimental Psychology Society. The supplied text reports no author conflicts.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude autistic children have a local processing bias in drawing. The copying task found no group differences in global or local accuracy, although autistic children were faster on a separate hidden-figures test.