The reliance of spatial-visual cues and the effect of labeling for memory in autistic children

Hermelin&O'Connor〔18〕は、言葉のない遅滞自閉児が弁別視覚情報を利用できないのに対し、位置関係を示す情報には良好であることを報告した。一方、Babska〔2〕は、2才の健常児が視覚手がかりを使用できず、位置手がかりに頼ることを報告した。よって今回の実験Iでは、言葉のない遅滞自閉児の位置手がかり使用が2才以下の発達的なものであることを示した。一方、Horn & Myers〔19〕は、健常3才児の視覚手がかり使用が言語符号化によることを示唆した。よって実験IIでは、視覚手がかり使用が言語符号化によることをラベリングの効果から立証し、発達年令4才の言葉のある自閉児も言語符号化を使用できることを見い出した。Hermelin and O'Connor〔18〕and Hermelin〔17〕reported that their nonverbal retarded autistic subjects were unable to discriminate between two boxes marked with different shapes. The children's responses were founded to be a function of the position of the boxes in space (left-right position) rather than of the shapes portrayed In short-term memory experiments of normal younger children, Babska〔2〕suggests an early inability to utilize visual cues to search for hidden object and a shift between the ages of 2 and 3 from reliance on memory of spatial cues to reliance on the memory of visual cues. Thus, it seems reasonable to assume that autistic children who responsed the position in space may be functioning similar to normal children below the age of 2. From this assumption, experiment I was designed to test whether autistic children below a 2-year level of development rely on spatial cues, and whether autistic children above a 3-year level of development rely on visual cues. The result provided evidence that both autistic and retarded children below a 2-year level of development and normal 2-year-old children relied on spatial cues, while autistic childrea above a 3-year level of development relied onvisual cues simlar to normal children above the age of 3. On the other hand, Horn and Myers〔19〕suggest that visual cues may be to provide some kind of verbal discriminative cues and then 3-year-olds may provide verbal codes for themselves and 2-year-olds do not. Thus, experiment II was designed to test whether autistic children above a 3-year level of development provided verbal codes when the experimenter provided labeling visual cues. The result provided evidence that visual cues were the use of verbal codes and autistic children above a 3-year level of development could use verbal codes