Autistic children and the object permanence task.
Many mentally retarded autistic children can understand the concept of object permanence, but, in comparison to developmental-age matched normal children, the behavioral strategies they employ in carrying out the Casati-Lezine Object Permanence Test are deficient and lead to failure. These deficiencies appear unrelated to interference of stereotypic or other bizarre behavior in task performance. Similar problem-solving deficiencies can be found in mentally retarded children who are not autistic, suggesting that the deficiencies themselves are less related to the social-communication deficits of autistic children, but more to the general problem-solving difficulties found in children with a lower developmental quotient. Nevertheless, the qualitative analysis of results shows a tendency in autistic children, despite their better developmental level, to use less coordinated and regular sequences to solve the task than normal or mentally retarded children.
Département de Neurophysiologie, Centre Hospitalier Régional, Universitaire de Bretonneau, Tours, France.
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JL
Adrien
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Tanguay
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C
Barthélémy
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Martineaú
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A
Perrot
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Hameury
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Sauvage
D001288:Attention; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003210:Concept Formation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D007223:Infant; D008607:Intellectual Disability / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D009769:Object Attachment