Drawing ability in autism: A window into the imagination

This study investigated imagination via drawing tasks, in 15 children with autism and 15 children with Asperger Syndrome, compared to verbal mental ag e matched normal children and children with moderate learning difficulties (MLD). Experiment 1 used the Draw an Impossible Man Task. While children wi th autism were impaired relative to the normal group, they were not impaire d relative to the children with MLD. In order to probe for an imagination d eficit, Experiment 2 employed a more challenging measure of imaginative dra wing, a task involving mixing categories to produce drawings of real or unr eal entities (e.g., drawing half-fish/half-mouse). This revealed an autism- specific deficit. Experiment 3 confirmed this was not due to difficulties i n combining elements per se. Experiment 4 required subjects to transform a picture (e.g., a cloud into a swan) and again found an autism-specific defi cit. Children with Asperger Syndrome were only impaired when required to ma ke such transformations spontaneously.