Abstract
The ability to integrate information is an important aspect of cognitive development. Piaget (1950) and others have seen an increase in this ability as marking important progress in cognitive development. Frith (1989), on the other hand, proposed that this is an area of weakness for people with autism and suggested that such a deficit could provide an explanation for the characteristic symptoms of autism. As a test of the hypothesis that people with autism had difficulty in integrating information, the performance of subjects with autism was compared with that of subjects with retardation and normally developing subjects, matched for verbal age and sex, on four analogy tasks. It was predicted that control subjects would perform significantly better than autistic subjects on these tasks. There was a complex pattern of results; however, it was apparent that there was a tendency for the autistic subjects to have greater difficulty with analogies tests than control subjects. It was suggested that autistic people have an impaired ability to integrate stimuli and thus have difficulty in perceiving relationships such as those depicted in analogy tasks.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Australian Council for Educational Research (1949–1953).Junior Non-Verbal Test. Melbourne A.C.E.R.
Bennetto, L., Pennington, B. F., and Rogers, S. J. (1995). Impaired and intact memory functions in autism: A working memory model. Submitted for publication.
Case, R. (1992) The role of the frontal lobes in the regulation of cognitive development.Brain Cogn. 20: 51–73.
Donaldson, M. (1978)Children's Minds, Fontana/Croom Helm, London.
Dunn, L. M., and Dunn, L. M. (1981)Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised, American Guidance Service, Circle Pines, MN.
Frith, U. (1989)Autism: Explaining the Enigma, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
Frith, U. (1970a). Studies in pattern detection in normal and autistic children: I immediate recall of auditory sequences.J. Abnorm. Psychol. 76: 413–420.
Frith, U. (1970b). Studies in pattern detection in normal and autistic children: II reproduction and production of color sequences,J. Exp. Child Psychol. 10: 120–135.
Goswami, U., and Brown, A. L. (1990). Melting chocolate and melting snowmen: analogical reasoning and causal relations.Cognition 35: 69–95.
Halford, G. S. (1987). A structure-mapping approach to cognitive development.Int. J. Psychol. 22: 609–642.
Hermelin, B. (1976). Coding and the sense modalities. In Wing, L. (ed.),Early Childhood Autism, Pergamon Press, Oxford, pp. 135–168.
Hermelin, B., and O'Connor, N. (1970).Psychological Experiments with Autistic Children, Pergamon Press, Oxford.
McEvoy, R. E., Rogers, S. J., and Pennington, B. F. (1993). Executive function and social communication deficits in young autistic children.J. Child Psychol. Psychiatry 34: 563–578.
Nippold, M. A., and Sullivan, M. P. (1987). Verbal and perceptual analogical reasoning and proportional metaphor comprehension in young children.J. Speech and Hearing Research 30, 367–376.
Oswald, D. P., and Ollendick, T. H. (1998). Role taking and social competence in autism and mental retardation.J. Aut. Devel. Dis. 19: 119–127.
Ozonoff, S., Pennington, B. F., and Rogers, S. J. (1991). Executive function deficits in high-functioning autistic individuals: Relationship to theory of mind.J. Child Psychol. Psychiatry 32: 1081–1105.
Ozonoff, S., Rogers, S. J., and Pennington, B. F. (1991). Asperger's syndrome: Evidence of an empirical distinction from high-functioning autism.J. Child Psychol. Psychiatry 332: 1107–1122.
Pennington, B. F. (1995). The working memory function of the prefrontal cortices: Implications for developmental and individual differences in cognition. In Haith, M. M., Benson, J., Roberts, R. and Pennington, B. F. (eds.),Puture Oriented Processes in Development, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Piaget, J. (1950)The Psychology of Intelligence, Harcourt, Brace, New York.
Prior, M., and Hoffmann, W. (1990). Brief report: neuropsychological testing of autistic children through an exploration with frontal lobe tests.J. Aut. Devel. Dis. 20: 581–590.
Reed, T. (1994). Performance of autistic and control subjects on three cognitive perspective taking tasks.J. Aut. Devel. Dis. 24: 53–66.
Reed, T. (1995). Visual perspective taking as a measure of working memory in autistic and control subjects. Unpublished manuscript.
Schopler, E., Reichler, R. J., and Renner, B. R. (1990).The Childhood Autism Rating Scale, Western Psychological Services, CA.
Shallice, T., and Burgess, P. (1991). Higher-order cognitive impairments and frontal lobe lesions in man. In Levin, Eisenberg, and Benton (eds.),Frontal Lobe Function and Dysfunction, Oxford University Press, New York.
Snidjers-Oomen, J. Th., and Snidjers-Oomen, N. (1970),Non-verbal Intelligence Tests for Deaf and Hearing Subjects (fourth edition), Wolters Noordhoff nv., Groeningen, The Netherlands.
Stuss, D. T., and Benson, D. F. (1986). Executive system. In Stuss, D. T., and Benson, D. F. (eds.),The Frontal Lobes, Raven Press, New York.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Reed, T. Analogical reasoning in subjects with autism, retardation, and normal development. J Dev Phys Disabil 8, 61–76 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02578440
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02578440