title: Numerical Estimation in Children With Autism.
abstract: Number skills are often reported anecdotally and in the mass media as a relative strength for individuals with autism, yet there are remarkably few research studies addressing this issue. This study, therefore, sought to examine autistic children's number estimation skills and whether variation in these skills can explain at least in part strengths and weaknesses in children's mathematical achievement. Thirty-two cognitively able children with autism (range = 8-13 years) and 32 typical children of similar age and ability were administered a standardized test of mathematical achievement and two estimation tasks, one psychophysical nonsymbolic estimation (numerosity discrimination) task and one symbolic estimation (numberline) task. Children with autism performed worse than typical children on the numerosity task, on the numberline task, which required mapping numerical values onto space, and on the test of mathematical achievement. These findings question the widespread belief that mathematical skills are generally enhanced in autism. For both groups of children, variation in performance on the numberline task was also uniquely related to their academic achievement, over and above variation in intellectual ability; better number-to-space mapping skills went hand-in-hand with better arithmetic skills. Future research should further determine the extent and underlying causes of some autistic children's difficulties with regards to number.
authors: Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany.|Department of Psychology, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.
authors: David
authors: D
authors: Aagten-Murphy
authors: Centre for Research in Autism and Education (CRAE), UCL Institute of Education, University College London, UK.
authors: Claudia
authors: C
authors: Attucci
authors: Centre for Research in Autism and Education (CRAE), UCL Institute of Education, University College London, UK.
authors: Niki
authors: N
authors: Daniel
authors: Centre for Research in Autism and Education (CRAE), UCL Institute of Education, University College London, UK.
authors: Elena
authors: E
authors: Klaric
authors: Department of Psychology, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.|School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia.
authors: David
authors: D
authors: Burr
authors: Centre for Research in Autism and Education (CRAE), UCL Institute of Education, University College London, UK.|School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia.
authors: Elizabeth
authors: E
authors: Pellicano
mesh_terms: D000124:Achievement; D000293:Adolescent; D000367:Age Factors; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008131:London; D008297:Male; D008433:Mathematics; D011930:Reaction Time; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis
keywords: autism; mathematics; number; visual perception