Identification and drawing of early concepts in children with autism spectrum disorder and children without disability

Abstract

This comparative study is a replication and extension of previous work related to children’s drawings of early concepts. In all, 15 children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and 19 children without disability took part in the study, and were video recorded as they drew 10 early emerging concepts such as “eat” and “more.” In a second task, the participants were asked to label Picture Communication Symbols conventionally used in augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems. Descriptive, correlational, and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data. The results were consistent with previous research for both groups. Across the 10 features coded, participants in both groups drew entire scenes and were more likely to draw complete representations of people. Identification of PCS was less than 25% for both groups. After a brief time delay, the participants were able to remember the names of their drawings; however, performance on this recall task was positively related to their age. The language scores of the participants without disability were associated with their use of isolated parts in drawings. Trends in the data suggest potential avenues for follow up with larger studies examining use of self, others, and entire scenes in children with ASD. Implications for therapy and future directions pertaining to symbolic understanding in children with ASD are discussed.