A Puzzle-Based Tool to Study Individualized Perception Reactions for Children with Autism

Several studies on autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show that there exists significant heterogeneity in phenotype of the disorder. Additionally, many published findings also suggested that ASD is defined by atypical local/global processing. In this paper, we designed a puzzled-based intervention to examine the sensitiveness to the information of local /global processing on individuals with ASD. Additionally, we surveyed the participants and their parents regarding their perceptions and feelings while completing the puzzles. The results verify that the proposed method can evaluate the degree of perception of local/global information by those on the spectrum. As a result, the design of puzzle-based visual stimuli with local/global information involved may become one of the crucial phenotypes to define ASD and can be further applied to facilitate a sub grouping for people with ASD.