Cognitive Development in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Piaget’s Cognitive Developmental Approach

Abstract

Children with autism spectrum disorder often experience difficulties in cognitive skills related to understating, comprehending, analyzing, synthesizing, evaluating, and differentiating between two objects. The present study objective to investigate the effect of Piaget based cognitive tasks on the cognitive skills of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Eight children with ASD were selected through purposive sampling and assigned for the intervention program. To measure IQ, the Non-Verbal performance test Raven’s colored progressive matrices test was used, and the Indian scale for assessment of autism (ISAA) was used to measure the level of autism spectrum disorder. The IQ was obtained above 80, mild level of ASD, and 6-12 years of the children were placed for this study. The cognitive skills of children were assessed pre- (before) and post- (after intervention). An intervention program based on Piaget’s cognitive tasks was implemented on ASD children for four weeks (six days per week) with 30 minutes per session. The total scores on cognitive skills of ASD children were enhanced in the post-test score. The effects of the Piaget’s cognitive tasks (concrete operational stage: conservation task, classification, and particular reasoning) intervention were most evident in the task performance rating scale on tasks conservation, classification, and particular reasoning. Children with ASD can benefit from the Piaget based cognitive tasks to enhance cognitive skills. The study findings emphasize the effectiveness of the cognitive skills on Piaget based cognitive tasks intervention, which parents may use, psychologists, special educators who work with ASD children.