Structural Learning in Autistic and Non-Autistic Children: A Replication and Extension.
Svenja Oestreicher, Dermot M Bowler, Claire T Derwent and 6 others
PMID 39269674WHAT IT FOUND
Autistic children matched on age and IQ learned spatial arrangements, but scored lower than non-autistic children in the final task block.
The difference appeared late, not early.
Key findings
01In the Structural Learning task, both groups performed above chance in all five blocks, but groups differed significantly in Block 5 only, with the non-autistic group improving and the autistic group dropping.
02On the Simple Discrimination task, equivalence testing indicated the groups were equivalent in Blocks 2 to 5, but not in Block 1.
03Parent-reported executive function scores were higher, indicating more difficulty, in the autistic group than in the non-autistic group, and across the combined sample these scores were significantly correlated with lower performance on re-paired trials.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The final analysed sample was small: 25 autistic and 28 non-autistic children. The autistic and non-autistic groups differed in parent-reported executive functions, and the authors state this may have influenced the task results. Executive functions were measured by parent report, not by a direct performance test. Some autistic participants had additional diagnoses, and one took psychotropic medication, while non-autistic participants were excluded if they had psychiatric disorders. The authors excluded children who performed at chance on Block 5 of the Simple Discrimination task, assuming they had a more general learning difficulty. The study compared children at one time point rather than following them over time. Several hypotheses were tested without adjusting the significance level for multiple comparisons. The authors note they could not recruit a larger well-matched sample.
Declared interests
Technische Universität Dresden is named as the funder. No other conflict-of-interest or author-declaration information is provided in the supplied text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the Block 5 group difference as evidence that autistic children cannot learn spatial arrangements. Both groups performed above chance in all five blocks, and the groups did not differ significantly in Blocks 1 to 4.
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