Non-superior disembedding performance in children with high-functioning autism and its cognitive style account.

Abstract : Some early studies showed a superior disembedding performance in autistic people while other studies found no difference between autistic and controls. The present study aimed to assess such disembedding ability in 14 boys with high-functioning autism (HFA) and 14 chronological age and non-verbal IQ matched typically developed boys using an Informatized Kohs' Cube Test (“Samuel”) and a modified Children's embedded figures test (CEFT). No statistically significant group difference was found between paired subjects (although more control subjects succeeded in the Samuel Test) and the HFA subjects showed in the Samuel Test as much “flexibility” in strategy adoption as the control subjects, which is not in accordance with some early reports of superior visuo-spatial performance nor with the classical weak coherence theory. Results in the present study, the discrepancies in early findings as well as the symptomatic and cognitive heterogeneity of autism are discussed in the light of cognitive style account.