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Notes
The extent to which C.O.’s drawings of “IT” could be considered remarkable was also evaluated by comparing C.O.’s drawings with those collected from six 11-year-old neurotypical boys (control group). Five expert raters (art teachers) were required to judge both a copy and a drawing from memory of “IT” collected from C.O. and the control group. The raters used a checklist adapted from Jolley et al. (2013). They had to judge on four 1-to-7 Likert scales the following aspects: (1) creativity; (2) quality of expressed emotion; (3) likeness to the original character; (4) accuracy. An overall score was also computed as the sum of the four scale scores. Statistical comparisons by Crawford’s t-test showed that C.O.’s scored always higher than controls, with the creativity dimension revealing the strongest difference (“IT” copying: creativity: C.O. = 6.5; controls: mean = 3.8, S.D. = 0.6; t = 3.91, one-tailed p = 0.006; expression: C.O. = 6.4; controls: mean = 4.1, S.D. = 1.1; t = 1.97, one-tailed p = 0.053; likeness: C.O. = 6.4; controls: mean = 3.9, S.D. = 1.1; t = 2.09, one-tailed p = 0.046; accuracy: C.O. = 5.8; controls: mean = 3.6, S.D. = 1.1; t = 1.85, one-tailed p = 0.062; total: C.O. = 25.1; controls: mean = 15.4, S.D. = 3.6; t = 2.45, one-tailed p = 0.029. “IT” spontaneous drawing: creativity: C.O. = 6.6; controls: mean = 3.4, S.D. = 0.7; t = 3.77, one-tailed p = 0.007; expression: C.O. = 6.5; controls: mean = 3.7, S.D. = 1.3; t = 1.96, one-tailed p = 0.054; likeness: C.O. = 6.4; controls: mean = 3.4, S.D. = 1.2; t = 2.34, one-tailed p = 0.033; accuracy: C.O. = 5.9; controls: mean = 3.1, S.D. = 1.3; t = 1.99, one-tailed p = 0.052; total: C.O. = 25.4; controls: mean = 13.6, S.D. = 4.2; t = 2.53, one-tailed p = 0.026). Note that C.O.’s mash-up reported in Fig. 1 was not involved in these comparisons, because it would have been too difficult to provide controls with instruction for drawing a character reliably comparable with C.O.’s mash-up. However, we asked the raters to judge C.O.’s mash-up according to the above Likert dimensions, and they provided ratings nicely overlapping with those assigned to C.O.’s drawings included in the comparison, with the creativity dimension obtaining the highest score.
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Acknowledgments
We want to thank Roberta Cerrone, Clara Esposito, Veronica Lista, Marialaura Marra, Monica Positano and Gennaro Raimo for their help in data collection. We also want to warmly thank C.O. and his parents who enthusiastically participated in the study, in particular, C.O. who donated us with great generosity some of the drawings from his precious collection.
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MC contributed to the conceptualization, formal analysis, writing original draft, review and editing. CB contributed to the conceptualization, writing original draft. Data curation, formal analysis, methodology was performed by IZ. Formal analysis, project administration was done by RM. LT performed writing original draft, review and editing.
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Conson, M., Baiano, C., Zappullo, I. et al. Case Report: Drawing “IT”—A Neuropsychological Study on Visuospatial Abilities of a Boy with Autism and Drawing Talent. J Autism Dev Disord 53, 1710–1716 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-022-05514-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-022-05514-1