Are Visuospatial Strengths Observable in Autistic Preschoolers with Aggravating Symptoms?

Background: Adult autistic people (Caron, Mottron, Berthiaume, & Dawson, 2006) and school-age children (Van der Hallen, Chamberlain, de-Wit, & Wagemans, 2018) present strengths in various visuospatial tasks. Courchesne et al. (2015) demonstrated a similar profile in minimally verbal preschool children. However, no studies have examined the presence of visuospatial strengths in minimally verbal preschool children with behavioral difficulties that negatively impacting their adaptation to their physical and social environment. As a result, specialized services for this population do not use the strengths of these children in intervention.

Objectives: To document the presence of visuospatial strengths in autistic preschool children with associated conditions aggravating their adaptation. An exploratory study.

Methods: Ten autistic children (31 to 51 months of age) admitted in Day Hospital Services for major food selectivity, sleep difficulties, aggressivity or self-injury participated in the present study. The severity level according to the DSM-5 was established between 2 and 3 for all children by a child psychiatrist. Verbal language level was measured by Mc Arthur, Reynell or CELF according to their chronologic age and ADOS-2 module used in the diagnostic evaluation process. Non-verbal intelligence was assessed with the Preschool Embedded Figure Test (PEFT; Witkin, Oltman, Raskin, & Karp, 1971). A descriptive statistical analysis provided a group portrait of the participants regarding their performance on the PEFT and their developmental age in terms of oral language.

Results: All but one child presented a major speech onset delay (developmental speech level: 16.5 months (SD=11.2). Six children could complete the PEFT. The average number of successful items was 16.75 on 24 (SD=2.99) for four 3 years old children and 16.5 on 24 (SD=3.54) for two 4 years old children. This performance outranged that of the normative sample (10.58, SD=4.93 and 12.87, SD= 3.43 respectively). A t-test revealed a significant difference between groups at 3 years old (t=2.41; p=0.02), while it was not significant at 4 years old (t=1.47; p=0.15).

Conclusions: Non-verbal autistic children with major aggravating symptoms present a superior performance in target detection in the same extent as those without such symptoms. The next step of the present study will consist in testing interventions addressing these symptoms using their specific strengths.