The use of nonverbal Piagetian tasks to assess the cognitive development of autistic children.

12 autistic, 12 normal, and 12 trainable mentally retarded (TMR) children age 4-9 years were administered 6 tasks designed to assess Piagetian concepts. All of the tasks required the child to locate a food reward hidden in 1 box among several. The boxes varied in size, shape, color, number, and physical arrangement, as a function of the particular concept being tested. The paradigm was designed to eliminate the possible confounding effects of linguistic and attention deficits on Piagetian task performance. It was hypothesized that the presence of such deficits in autistic children interferes with their performance on tests designed to measure intellectual development and status. The procedures successfully reduced the confounding effects of language and attention deficits with the result that the performance of autistic children was comparable with that of normal children and superior to that of TMR children.