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.
Adrien
J L
JL
Département de Neurophysiologie, Centre Hospitalier Régional, Universitaire de Bretonneau, Tours, France.
Tanguay
P
P
Barthélémy
C
C
Martineaú
J
J
Perrot
A
A
Hameury
L
L
Sauvage
D
D
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