The Ability Of Mental Rotation Of Autistic Children In4-7Years Old

Objective Autism is usually be diagnosed around3years-old. The language disorder,social communication disorders, and starchy behaviors, interests are the major clinicalsymptoms of Autism, sometimes with compulsive behaviors, hyperactivity symptoms,difficulties in learning and intellectual disturbance, and so on. At present, the researchdomains of autism are cognitive, behavior and biology, and neuropsychological.Mental rotation is a mental process of analogy, as similar as the object of physicalrotation, which conscious of the rotation of the objects without actual operation so asto attain the correct perception. Which also means mental rotation is a form of spacetransformation. The ability of mental rotation is a part of space intelligence, and it’shighly related to intelligence. This study aims to explore the differences between theautistic children and normal children of the ability of mental rotation, and to researchwhether there are correlation between intelligence and the ability of mental rotation inautistic children, and discussed the mechanism of mental rotation.Methods10autistic children from Xinyikang health service center, and5autisticchildren from a kindergarten named Zhihuishu of Hefei City. Both of them are diagnosed according to the DSM-Ⅳ by some authoritative institutions, such as thedepartment of pediatric of the Third hospital of Zhongshan University, Hospitalattached of Nanjing Medical University, etc. We use Clancy Autism Behavior RatingScale (T scores is greater than14) and Childhood Autism Rating Scale (T scores isgreater than30) to screen who will be in autism group. Autism group are all boys,aged from4to7years old.(mean age5.47+1.13).30typical children, into twogroups,16in younger group (8males), ranging from2to4years old, mean age3.31+0.95, and14in older group (6males) aged from4-7years old. Mean age5.36+0.63.All three groups accept two tests from C-WYCSI, a rotation task, and a mentalrotation task.Result There is no significant difference between the younger group and autisticgroup in scores of two intelligence tests. The younger group have higher scores in thecognition of rotation, neither animals nor objects, compared to autistic group (P=0.012*, P=0.043*, P=0.023*). There is no significant difference between the twogroups in mental rotation task. The older group is better than the other two groups inevery task. The difference of age is significant between the younger group and theolder group (P=0.000**). The older group has significantly better performance thanthe younger children except the cognition of animals’ rotation in mental rotation task,clockwise90°, counter-clockwise180°(P=0.094, P=0.116, P=0.055). Thecorrelation of the cognition of rotation task and the mental rotation task issignificantly in autistic group (r=0.627*). And it did not happened in typicalchildren group. Both three groups significantly related in Verbal intelligence andProcedure intelligence. Autistic group and the typical group has significant genderdifference (P=0.001**). The younger group and the older group have not.Conclusions Compared to the younger children, autistic children have deficiency incognition of rotation, no matter animals or objects, even if they have equaledintelligence. With same clinical age, autistic children have significant deficiency both in the development of cognition of rotation and the ability of mental rotation. Thecognition of rotation may be the basic mechanism to develop the ability of mentalrotation.