What does it mean for a child to imitate someone else? We tested matched groups of children with and without autism (n = 16 for each group, with a mean chronological age of 11 years and a mean verbal mental age of 6 years) to investigate two potentially dissociable aspects of imitation: copying goal-directed actions, on the one hand, and imitating…

Individuals with autism show a complex profile of differences in imitative ability, including a general deficit in precision of imitating another's actions and special difficulty in imitating nonmeaningful gestures relative to meaningful actions on objects. Given that they also show atypical patterns of visual attention when observing social…

Compared to mental and chronological age-matched groups of normal children, six autistic children (1) did not maximize reinforcement; (2) sampled less, and less efficiently; and (3) were much less responsive to extinction. Autistic sampling behavior was redirected by stimulus change. Results are viewed as perhaps causally related to many…

Compared performance of children with autism, with learning disabilities, and normally developing 4-year-olds on reasoning problems with and without instruction to use imagery. Found that instruction to use imagery led to persistent logical performance. Children with autism displayed a distinctive response pattern, performing around chance levels,…

Describes three experiments that tested autistic children's nonverbal and verbal categorization abilities. Concludes that autistic children do not suffer a specific cognitive deficit in ability to categorize and form abstract concepts. (HOD)