Children With Autism Show Reduced Information Seeking When Learning New Tasks.
Information-seeking behaviours occur when children look to adults in order to gain further information about a novel stimulus/situation. The current study investigated information seeking in children with developmental delays (DD) and those with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) during a simulated teaching situation. Twenty preschool-aged children with ASD and 15 children with DD were exposed to a series of videos where a teacher provided novel instructions and demonstrated novel actions. We found that children with DD, but not those with ASD, demonstrated information-seeking behaviours in response to instructions that exceeded their level of understanding. This suggests that children with DD may use information-seeking behaviours to compensate for their cognitive and language difficulties when novel actions are being taught, while the same is not true for children with ASD.
['Young|Nicole|N|', 'Hudry|Kristelle|K|', 'Trembath|David|D|', 'Vivanti|Giacomo|G|']
D000067877:Autism Spectrum Disorder D002675:Child, Preschool D002658:Developmental Disabilities D005260:Female D006801:Humans D057226:Information Seeking Behavior D007858:Learning D008297:Male
information seeking learning developmental delay autism spectrum disorder comprehension social referencing