Exploring the Influence of Object Similarity and Desirability on Children's Ownership Identification and Preferences in Autism and Typical Development

This study investigated how ownership identification accuracy and object preferences in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are influenced by visual distinctiveness and relative desirability. Unlike typically developing (TD) children matched on receptive language (M age equivalents: 58.8–59.9 months), children with ASD had difficulty identifying another person’s property when object discriminability was low and identifying their own relatively undesirable objects. Children with ASD identified novel objects designated to them with no greater accuracy than objects designated to others, and associating objects with the self did not bias their preferences. We propose that, due to differences in development of the psychological self, ownership does not increase the attentional or preferential salience of objects for children with ASD

Science Hunters: An inclusive approach to engaging with science through Minecraft

Science Hunters is an outreach project which employs the computer game Minecraft to engage children with scientific learning and research through school visits, events, and extracurricular clubs. We principally target children who may experience barriers to accessing Higher Education, including low socioeconomic status, being the first in their family to attend university, and disability (including Special Educational Needs). The Minecraft platform encourages teamwork and makes science learning accessible and entertaining for children, irrespective of background. We employ a flexible approach that adapts to the needs of the users. More than 8000 children have been engaged in the first four years, with overwhelmingly positive feedback

Symbolic Understanding of Pictures in Low-functioning Children with Autism and Typically Developing Children.

This thesis investigates how low-functioning children with autism and language-matched typically developing children comprehend symbolic relations between pictures, words and the objects they represent. Using a series of cognitive-behavioural paradigms, this research documents how these developmental populations use pictures as a source for deducing information about the world and whether they differ in their understanding of what fundamentally relates pictures and referents. Study one tests whether children's mapping of referential picture-object relations is facilitated by iconicity (the extent that a picture resembles its referent) and/or verbal labelling, and study two examines the perceptual cues that direct the generalisation of labels from colour photographs. The third study addresses the factors that influence children's ability to contextualise pictorial symbols and use them to adaptively guide their behaviour in real time and space. Study four investigates the relative importance of artists' communicative intentions and perceptual resemblance to children's mapping of word-picture and picture-object relations, and study five examines whether representational status (as determined by artists' intentions) influences children's naming and reproduction of ambiguous shapes. The findings of this thesis indicate that children with autism can recognise perceptual similarities between pictures and objects, but they do not understand the rules that constrain symbolic word-picture-object mapping. Across studies, iconicity emerges as an important factor that mediates symbolic picture comprehension in autism. Furthermore, unlike their typically developing peers, children with autism do not reflect on the social-communicative intentions underlying pictures when naming, drawing or identifying referent objects. Instead, they derive meaning based exclusively on resemblance, making them naive realists. Theoretically, this thesis contributes to the field by informing our understanding of how low-functioning children with autism, an extremely under-researched population, comprehend symbols. At an applied level, these results have important implications for the design and delivery of picture-based communication interventions

Is children’s naming and drawing of pictures mediated by representational status?:evidence from typical development and autism.

Research has debated whether shape or inferred referential intent directs children’s picture naming. Here we investigate whether typically developing (TD) children aged 2–5 years and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) comprehend pictures differently depending on whether they are intentional symbols. Participants were shown ambiguous line drawings and were informed that they were either intentional or accidental creations. Children were asked to name and draw each picture. TD children only evidenced a preference for shape-based naming when pictures were intentional representations, and were increasingly likely to create canonical drawings of symbolised referents when stimuli were intentional. Representational intentions did not influence the verbal or drawing responses of children with ASD, however, the nature of their drawings was related to their prior naming. Thus, the meaning that TD children derive from 2-D shapes is mediated by referential intent, while picture comprehension in autism may be comparatively egocentric

Are children with autism more likely to retain object names when learning from colour photographs or black-and-white cartoons?

For the first time, this study investigated whether children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing (TD) children matched on language comprehension (M age equivalent =  ~ 44 months) are more likely to retain words when learning from colour photographs than black-and-white cartoons. Participants used mutual exclusivity to fast map novel word-picture relationships and retention was assessed following a 5-min delay. Children with ASD achieved significantly greater retention accuracy when learning from photographs rather than cartoons and, surprisingly, responded more accurately than TD children when learning from photographs. Our results demonstrate that children with ASD benefit from greater iconicity when learning words from pictures, providing a data-grounded rationale for using colour photographs when administering picture-based interventions

Do Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Share Fairly and Reciprocally?

This study investigated whether children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing children matched on receptive language share resources fairly and reciprocally. Children completed age-appropriate versions of the Ultimatum and Dictator Games with real stickers and an interactive partner. Both groups offered similar numbers of stickers (preferring equality over self-interest), offered more stickers in the Ultimatum Game, and verbally referenced ‘fairness’ at similar rates. However, children with ASD were significantly more likely to accept unfair offers and were significantly less likely to reciprocate the puppet’s offers. Failure to reciprocate fair sharing may significantly impact on social cohesion and children’s ability to build relationships. These important differences may be linked to broader deficits in social-cognitive development and potentially self-other understanding

Mine is better than yours:Investigating the ownership effect in children with autism spectrum disorder and typically developing children

Ownership has a unique and privileged influence on human psychology. Typically developing (TD) children judge their objects to be more desirable and valuable than similar objects belonging to others. This ‘ownership effect’ is due to processing one’s property in relation to ‘the self’. Here we explore whether children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) – a population with impaired self-understanding – prefer and over-value property due to ownership. In Experiment 1, we discovered that children with ASD did not favour a randomly endowed toy and frequently traded for a different object. By contrast, TD children showed a clear preference for their randomly endowed toy and traded infrequently. Both populations also demonstrated highly-accurate tracking of owner-object relationships. Experiment 2 showed that both TD children and children with ASD over-value their toys if they are self-selected and different from other-owned toys. Unlike TD children, children with ASD did not over-value their toys in comparison to non-owned identical copies. This finding was replicated in Experiment 3, which also established that mere ownership elicited over-valuation of randomly endowed property in TD children. However, children with ASD did not consistently regard their randomly endowed toys as the most valuable, and evaluated property irrespective of ownership. Our findings show that mere ownership increases preferences and valuations for self-owned property in TD children, but not children with ASD. We propose that deficits in self-understanding may diminish ownership effects in ASD, eliciting a more economically-rational strategy that prioritises material qualities (e.g. what a toy is) rather than whom it belongs to

When do autistic children exhibit a shape bias? : Investigating the impact of methodology on novel noun generalisation in autism and typical development

From ~24 months old, typically developing (TD) children often generalise names for solid objects to novel examples that are the same shape. This ‘shape bias’ can facilitate word learning by providing an attentional short-cut, allowing children to accurately generalise novel nouns. Autistic children often experience delays in language acquisition, and difficulty exploiting the shape bias may be a contributing factor. However, extant research findings are highly inconsistent, with autistic children exhibiting a shape bias in certain tasks but not others. Thus, the current research investigated whether variability in autistic children’s shape bias can be explained by methodological differences. Autistic children (aged 4 to 9 years) and TD children matched on receptive vocabulary (aged 30 months to 4 years) participated in five experiments measuring shape bias in both ‘forced-choice’ and ‘yes or no’ variants of a novel noun generalisation task (NNG). Each task included an ‘online’ condition, where children were asked to generalise a label from a visible standard item to a target, and an ‘offline’ condition where the standard was absent at test, and generalisation had to be completed from memory. Experiment 1 investigated whether the visibility of the standard affected autistic children’s shape bias in a forced-choice task with high contrast stimuli. We found that both autistic and TD groups generalised by shape regardless of standard visibility. Experiment 2 investigated whether shape was still preferred in a yes/no task, where children had the freedom to include any of the stimuli in the category rather than just the best example. In this task, autistic children were more likely to accept the differently shaped distractors than the TD group. Experiments 3 and 4 used the same tasks with low contrast stimuli to investigate whether the requirement to remember the standard had an impact when object shapes were more similar. Both groups again exhibited a shape bias in the forced-choice task, however in the yes/no version only the TD group generalised by shape. Finally, Experiment 5 investigated whether an attentional preference for small details could account for shape bias differences in autism in a yes/no task. We found that both autistic and TD children generalised based on global shape rather than a salient local feature. Overall, our results suggest that methodological variations can explain discrepancies in previous findings regarding shape bias in autism. Autistic children exhibited a strong shape bias in forced-choice tasks, whereas the bias appeared reduced or absent in yes/no tasks requiring children to categorise items individually. This suggests that differences may lie in autistic children’s use of the shape bias as a tool for category exclusion decisions, rather than inclusion decisions, raising questions about the role of the shape bias in word and category learning for all children. There may be multiple routes through which attention to shape can contribute to learning and, by identifying which routes are most accessible for autistic children, we can inform teaching methods that work in harmony with their strengths