Drawing development in autism: The intellectual to visual realism shift

Abstract:

Normal children above 5 years old or so show a shift in their drawing development from intellectual to visual realism (the I‐VR shift). Some cases of individuals with autism have been reported who appear to have a mental age (MA) of considerably less than 5 years old but who are capable of visual realism. This raises the possibility that in autism, the I‐VR shift is independent of MA—that children with autism as a group might show precocious visual realism, independent of technical competence. This hypothesis was tested by giving three different drawing tasks to a group of subjects with autism who were not selected for drawing competence. On these tasks they did not differ from either normal children or subjects with mental handicap (of an equivalent MA)—they showed the I‐VR shift at approximately the same MA level (above 5:5 years). This refutes the hypothesis that this shift is independent of MA in autism. The existence of intellectual realism as a normal phase in the drawing development of subjects with autism is discussed in relation to Leslie's meta‐representation theory.