An Experimental Study On The Diversity Effect Of Inductive Reasoning In Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders

Inductive reasoning refers to the process of deriving general conclusions from the individual premises,and the diversity effect refers to the tendency of people to use more diverse evidence to support the conclusions in the process.Inductive reasoning based on diversity is an important link in the development of individual cognition.Children with autism spectrum disorders(ASD)are unable to integrate their existing knowledge and experience and deal with new problems because of their insufficient ability to generalize and induction.In this case,they will show restricted repetitive cognition of the things and social relationships.Social and communication disorders and restricted repetitive patterns of behavior,interests,or activities are the core symptoms of ASD.Therefore,the inductive reasoning ability and diversity performance of individuals with ASD may be related to their core deficits.And to some extent,they may be able to explain the occurrence mechanism and specific representation of core disorders.Diversity effect was investigated in about 25 children with ASD and about 25intelligence-matched typically developing children,using Tobbi Pro X3-120 eye tracker to get diversity score and eye movement data in the inductive reasoning task with different conditions,and the results were as follows:In the experiment 1,the effects of material characteristics and group discrimination on the diversity effect was investigated by using simplified identification paradigm.The results showed that:(1)ASD children and TD children showed diversity effect,but thereare some differences compared to TD children.(2)For two groups of children,the total fixation duration and fixation count of the single feature material were significantly lower than those of the non-single feature material.(3)For two groups of children,the diversity score in the case of larger discrimination was significantly higher than that in the case of smaller discrimination.In the experiment 2,the effects of material type and group type on the diversity effect by using classical identification paradigm.The results showed that:(1)ASD children and TD children showed diversity effect on the eye-movement data,and the total fixation duration and fixation counts of TD children were significantly higher than ASD children.(2)For two groups of children,the total fixation duration and fixation counts of abiotic material were significantly higher than those of biological material.(3)For two groups of children,the scores and fixation counts in the case of single verse diverse(S/D)were significantly lower than that in the case of homogeneous verse diverse(H/D).In the experiment 3,the effects of material type and evidence clues on the diversity effect by using data selection paradigm.The results showed that:(1)ASD children and TD children failed to show diversity effect on the diversity scores,but showed diversity effect on the eye-movement data.(2)The evidence clues had no significant effect on the diversity scores and eye-movement data for ASD children,but TD children.In the case of sufficient evidence clues,the total fixation duration and fixation counts of TD children were significantly lower than those in the case of insufficient evidence clues.In the experiment 4,the effects of material type and group type on the diversity effect by using property-extended paradigm.The results showed that:(1)ASD children and TD children failed to show diversity effect on the diversity scores,but showed diversity effect on the eye-movement data.(2)For two groups of children,the total fixation duration and fixation counts of abiotic material were significantly higher than those of biological material.(3)For two groups of children,the scores and fixation counts in the case of single verse diverse(S/D)were significantly lower than that in the case of homogeneous verse diverse(H/D).The conclusions are as follows:1.The diversity effect of autistic children is certainly possible but insufficient;2.The selection of experimental materials affect children's inductive reasoning and cognitive processing,children with ASD and typically developing children pay more attention to materials with more stimulating information;3.In the inductive reasoning of children with ASD and typically developing children,they are not sensitive to the diversity information brought about by the change in the number of premise items,but they can use the diversity information brought by other perceptual differences to induce;4.Evidence cues of diversity in inductive reasoning has little effect on children with ASD,but can speed up cognitive processing in typically developing children.