Two Ends of Coinciding Continuums: Visuospatial Processing Style and Social Functioning In Autism and Down Syndrome

Background:

Nonverbal perceptual tasks that involve disembedding are often an area of strength for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). This strength, described as a detail-focused processing style, has been demonstrated in preschoolers with ASDs (e.g., Pellicano et al., 2010). The primacy of this cognitive style has led to examinations of its impact on core deficit domains in autism, such as social functioning. Findings have been inconsistent in autism (e.g., Pellicano et al., 2006; Teunisse et al., 2001), but there remains a foundation for a relationship between visuospatial processing style and social functioning in the literature on field independence/dependence in typical development (e.g., Saracho, 1995), thus warranting further research.

Objectives:

This study examined social functioning in children predicted to have contrasting visuospatial processing styles: children with ASDs and children with Down syndrome (DS). 

Methods:

Participants included 18 children with ASDs, 18 children with DS, and 18 typically developing controls (ASD/DS=4-9 years; Controls=2.5-5.5 years). Groups were matched as closely as possible on nonverbal IQ and receptive vocabulary age equivalents (~4.5-5 years). Statistical controls addressed complicated matching. Diagnoses were confirmed or ruled out using the ADOS, ADI-R, and clinical judgment. Visuospatial processing style was measured with the Preschool Embedded Figures Test (PEFT; Coates, 1972). Social functioning was measured with observation based coding of ADOS social initiations and standardized parent-report measures, including the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS; Constantino & Gruber, 2005) and the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, 2^nd Edition (Sparrow et al., 2005).  

Results:  

Results confirmed contrasting visuospatial processing styles. Children with ASDs were significantly more accurate on the PEFT than the children with DS (p<.0001, Cohen’s d=1.4), while controls were marginally more accurate than the children with DS (p<.06, d=.7) and marginally less accurate than the children with ASDs (p<.06, d=.6). Results also highlighted generally contrasting profiles of social functioning. Children with ASDs, compared to children with DS, showed greater impairment in broad social functioning on the SRS Total Score (p<.001, d=2.3) and Vineland-II Socialization domain (p<.005, d=.9). More fine-grained observational coding indicated that although the children with DS made more declarative initiations than the children with ASDs, this difference was not significant (p>.05, d=.4). Preliminary correlations suggested that a more detail-focused style, (i.e., higher PEFT accuracy), is related to greater social impairment on the SRS Total Score (r=.28, p<.01) for all children. Although the direction of correlations differed for the children with ASDs (r=.18) and DS (r=-.14), the correlations were not statistically significant different via Fisher Z comparison. 

Conclusions:  

Findings in the present study suggest that children with ASDs and children with DS fall at extreme ends of a visuospatial processing style continuum that may coincide with variability in social functioning. The more detail-focused children with ASDs showed greater social impairment than the more globally-focused children with DS. These patterns parallel individual differences described for typically developing children with field independent/dependent cognitive styles. Larger samples with wide variability in visuospatial processing style and social functioning will be needed to test theoretical models of relationship among these domains.