Spatial Perspective Taking in Non-Autistic Children and Autistic Children: Do Social Processes Benefit or Obstruct?

The present study investigated whether the presence of another person in a visuospatial perspective taking (VSPT) paradigm would influence the performance of non-autistic and autistic children. Experiment 1 tested non-autistic children aged 5-7 (N = 82, 42 girls) in a self-condition (pure spatial updating of self-mental rotation) and an other-condition (taking another agent's perspective). Experiment 2 compared 18 autistic children (3 girls, aged 7.17-14.33 years old) and 22 mental ability-matched non-autistic peers (10 girls, Mage = 6.82). Both experiments were conducted in mainland China with Chinese participants. Non-autistic children below 7 years of age and autistic children performed better in the self-condition than in the other-condition, especially when angular disparities were greater than 90 degrees, while no such differences were observed in 7-year-old non-autistic children. The interaction between perspective and angular disparity indicated the interference of another agent's presence in typical VSPT tasks from a developmental perspective. The results were discussed with regard to the nonsynchronous development of spatial and social ability involved in the VSPT paradigm and its implications for the purity of VSPT as a measure of spatial ability.