Abstract
Despite its impact on everyday functioning, spatial perspective-taking has rarely been investigated in autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and previous findings are surprisingly sparse and inconsistent. In the present study, we aimed to investigate spatial perspective-taking abilities in children and adolescents with ASD without intellectual disabilities, comparing them with a group of typically developing (TD) peers. Our objectives were: (i) to test similarities and differences between these groups in a spatial perspective-taking task; and (ii) to see whether similar or different underlying processes (i.e., fine and gross motor skills, and visuospatial abilities) might account for the groups’ performance in the spatial perspective-taking task. A group of children with ASD (N = 36) was compared with a TD group (N = 39), aged from 8 to 16 years. Participants were administered tasks assessing spatial perspective-taking, fine and gross motor skills, visuo-constructive abilities, visuospatial working memory, visual imagery, and mental rotation. Our results revealed that the ASD group had more difficulty with the spatial perspective-taking task than the TD group. The two groups also had some shared and some different processes that predicted their perspective-taking performance: a significant predictive effect of fine motor skills and visuospatial working memory emerged for both groups, while gross motor skills (i.e., walking heel-to-toe) and visuospatial imagery only revealed a role in the TD group. These findings suggest that different abilities might account for the two groups’ performance in the spatial perspective-taking task. Gross motor skills and complex visuospatial abilities seem to be more important in sustaining spatial perspective-taking ability in typical development than in the event of ASD. Some of the clinical and educational implications of these findings are discussed.
Highlights
Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by deficits in social communication, social interaction, and obsessive/stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests or activities (American Psychiatric Association, 2013)
The results showed that Object Perspective-Taking Test (OPT) performance was positively associated with spatial visualization ability and a preference for spatial imagery strategies, while it was negatively associated with the use of a mental rotation strategy
The present study aimed to investigate spatial perspectivetaking abilities in children and adolescents with ASD without intellectual disabilities (ID) comparing them with a group of typically developing (TD) peers
Summary
Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by deficits in social communication, social interaction, and obsessive/stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests or activities (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). A vast amount of research on the role of these processing peculiarities in the visuospatial domain in individuals with ASD has revealed a heterogeneous profile of strengths and weaknesses, depending on the type and complexity of the tasks administered (e.g., Edgin and Pennington, 2005; Happé and Frith, 2006; Kuschner et al, 2007; Mammarella et al, 2019; Cardillo et al, 2020). Visuospatial abilities can be trained (Uttal et al, 2013a,b; Meneghetti et al, 2017), so it is fundamentally important to understand the factors that influence performance on measures of these skills (Schmidt et al, 2013; Tarampi et al, 2016)
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