"Thinking in Pictures?" Performance of Chinese Children with Autism on Math Learning Through Eye-Tracking Technology

Popular movies such as Rain Man, A Beautiful Mind and The Imitation Game often depicting the leading characters with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with exceptional math skills (referred to as autistic savants) which is largely inconsistent with research; in fact, only 10% of individuals with ASD have such savant skills; instead, prior studies showed that during their middle school years, students with ASD usually under-perform an average of 5 years below their neuro-typically developing (NT) peers in mathematics. Plausible explanation of such a gap is attributed to the population's impairments of memory and cognitive development which in turn might undermine their learning abilities in one or more mathematical domains. Our present study aims to compare the effects of three different presentation styles during the training for children with ASD's mathematical skills (image-based, mathematical digit-based and audio-based ones) through the behavioral analysis and eye-tracking technology. Together with their actual performance in a small-scale pilot test, these data can provide clues to the questions we raised.