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Little is known about the relation between cognitive processes and imagination and whether this relation differs between neurotypically developing children and children with autism. To address this issue, we administered a cognitive task battery and Karmiloff-Smith's drawing task, which requires children to draw imaginative people and houses. For children with autism, executive function significantly predicted imaginative drawing. In neurotypically developing controls, executive function and cognitive-perceptual processing style predicted imaginative drawing, but these associations were moderated by mental age. In younger (neurotypically developing) children, better executive function and a local processing bias were associated with imagination; in older children, only a global bias was associated with imagination. These findings suggest that (a) with development there are changes in the type of cognitive processes involved in imagination and (b) children with autism employ a unique cognitive strategy in imaginative drawing.

Previous research suggests that children with autism have deficits in drawing imaginative content. However, these conclusions are largely based on tasks that require children to draw impossible persons, and performance on this task may be limited by social deficits. To determine the generality of the deficit in imagination in children with autism, we asked 25 children with autism (mean age 9;7) and 29 neurotypically developing children (mean age 8;7) to draw an imaginative person and house. Drawings of imaginary houses by children with autism did not differ from those by neurotypically developing controls, but drawings of persons were significantly less imaginative. These findings suggest that the impairment in imagination among children with autism may be specific to social stimuli.

A total of 405 children of 5–18 years of age were administered performance-based and parent-report measures of executive function (EF), and measures of motor, attention, reading, and mathematics performance. Attention, reading, and mathematics abilities were associated with a parent-report measure of EF. Reading and mathematics abilities were also associated with performance-based measures of EF, including the Animal Sorting, Inhibition, and Response Set subtests of the Developmental NEuroPSYchological Assessment-II. In contrast, motor functioning was only associated with performance-based measures of EF. Findings suggest that different constructs of EF are measured by parent-report versus performance-based measures, and that these different constructs of EF are associated with different neurodevelopmental processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]