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 age matched normal children and children with moderate learning difficulties (MLD). Experiment 1 used the Draw an Impossible Man Task. While children with autism were impaired relative to the normal group, they were not impaired relative to the children with MLD. In order to probe for an imagination deficit, Experiment 2 employed a more challenging measure of imaginative drawing, a task involving mixing categories to produce drawings of real or unreal entities (e.g., drawing half-fish/half-mouse). This revealed an autism-specific deficit. Experiment 3 confirmed this was not due to difficulties in 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 deficit. Children with Asperger Syndrome were only impaired when required to make such transformations spontaneously.