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Social Skills Activities that Teach Kids Problem-Solving

September 22 , 2021.

​​ Social skills activities are important for children of all abilities. With this in mind, We Rock the Spectrum’s Social Skills Blog Series aims to provide insight into activities and practical tips that help instill social skills in children. In this article, we focus on the importance of problem-solving skills in children and introduce five fun and educational activities that can enhance their problem-solving skill set. 

Autism Spectrum Disorder is a developmental disability in which children find it difficult to socialize and interact with others. Although autism comes in a variety of forms, many 

kids have difficulty developing problem-solving skills. The combination of diminished communication, emotional, and self-regulation skills, all contribute to the child’s reduced skills. To be able to become well-rounded individuals, children of all abilities need to be given the opportunity and resources to learn proper problem-solving skills so that they can face challenges head-on later in life. With this in mind, we have put together a guide on the importance of problem-solving skills for both neurotypical children and children with autism.

Why is Problem-Solving Important?

Problem-solving deals with the ability to make decisions in tough or challenging situations. Children of all abilities need to learn how to properly handle each situation with problem-solving in order to become more independent and resilient. Having good problem-solving skills allow children to gain the patience and self-confidence they need to develop into capable individuals.

Problem-solving activities help children develop the skills they need to efficiently and effectively deal with complex issues and situations. In life, children will run into a variety of situations with differing contexts. Having the proper problem-solving skill set will allow children to learn how to handle every situation with ease. Once a child is able to effectively problem-solve, they will be able to better navigate their own personal problems and those of others as well. Additionally, a child will be able to identify a problem, develop different solutions, test different solutions, and analyze the results.

It is essential for parents or guardians to help boost problem-solving skills through a variety of sensory strategies. Here is a list of 5 fun activities that will teach children of all abilities how to build their problem-solving skills.

5 Activities that Teach Problem Solving

1. problems in a jar.

Problems in a Jar is a fun and creative way for children to explore different situations that can occur in the real world. This activity is designed to help kids generate solutions from one problem or circumstance. To begin, an adult will write one situation on a small sheet of paper, fold it, and place it in a jar. This continues until the jar is full. The child then picks a paper and reads off the problem. He/she must then come up with the best solution that solves the challenging scenario. This helps children think thoroughly about each possible solution independently.

2. Scavenger Hunt

Everyone loves a game of scavenger hunt! This group activity prompts children’s deduction skills based on clues and hints, which in turn, enhances their problem-solving skills. To start, divide children into groups of 2-3 and have them come up with a plan on which members look for which items. Children can also brainstorm together on where each item is located. This helps kids work together towards one goal while also nourishing their communication. Parents can also reward kids with small treats for every item they find on the scavenger hunt.

3. Impromptu Skits

Impromptu skits are a fun and engaging way for kids to think independently and with quick reactions. In this activity, children are given one situation wherein they have to reenact how the situation unfolds and how to solve the issue. This allows children to think about how to deal with each situation and see how it can be solved efficiently. After the skit, ask the children to explain their thought processes and correct them if there were any actions that were unnecessary. Children watching the skit will also be able to learn and understand how to best act in certain circumstances. 

Puzzles are one of the best ways a child can stimulate their mind. Puzzles have multiple pieces that are all jumbled together. To solve a puzzle, children need to sort the pieces out and place them in their proper areas to be able to put the puzzle back together. This helps children develop memory recall and thought organization. To start off easy, children can work on puzzles with fewer pieces. Once they get the hang of it, they can move on to more difficult and complex puzzles to build their skill set. 

5. Play With A Purpose TM

Having a space where your children will feel safe experimenting is vital to developing problem-solving skills quickly. We Rock the Spectrum’s Play With A Purpose™ stimulates and exercises a child’s sight, smell, taste, hearing, touch, vestibular system, and proprioception through positive physical, emotional, and social development. At We Rock the Spectrum, kids are able to play and interact together through arts and crafts, classes, our sensory equipment , and more to strengthen their problem-solving skills in an inclusive, sensory-safe environment.

Key Takeaways

Equipping all children with the proper problem-solving tools and resources at an early age will ensure they develop the skills they need to become versatile individuals. Children who are able to hone their problem-solving skills at their most important phase of development will be able to become more independent and know how to acclimate best to a multitude of situations in the long run. We Rock the Spectrum is a kids gym franchise that offers a wide range of fun and inclusive problem-solving activities through its specialized sensory equipment and Play With A Purpose™ program. Discover more about our mission by getting in touch with us today !

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Social Problem Solving: Best Practices for Youth with ASD

• By: Michael Selbst, PhD, BCBA-D Steven B. Gordon, PhD, ABPP Behavior Therapy Associates
• July 1st, 2014
• assessment , problem solving , social information processing , social skills
• 8364    0

Joey, age 9, has been diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and due to his high functioning has been mainstreamed into a fourth grade classroom with a shadow. His […]

Joey, age 9, has been diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and due to his high functioning has been mainstreamed into a fourth grade classroom with a shadow. His challenging behaviors typically center on his peer interactions in spite of adequate academic performance. When in a group situation he becomes very argumentative when his ideas are not used, becomes very bossy on the playground, and has run out of the classroom when things do not go his way. Megan, age 14, has also been diagnosed with ASD. She isolates herself from her peers and rarely initiates or responds to greetings. Conversations are almost nonexistent unless they are focused on her favorite topics of anime or fashion.

Children with ASD described as above typically have significant social skills impairments and often require direct instruction in order to address these deficits. They often have difficulty in many of the following areas: sharing, handling frustration, controlling their temper, ending arguments calmly, responding to teasing, making/keeping friends, complying with requests. Strong social skills contribute to the initiation and maintenance of positive relationships with others and as a result contribute to peer acceptance. Social skills impairments, on the other hand, contribute to peer rejection. The ability to get along with peers, therefore, is as important to self-esteem as the ability to meet with academic success in the classroom. This article will review the domain of social skills, the assessment of social skills, the importance of social problem-solving and a social skills curriculum which incorporates evidence-based practices to address this very important area.

Social information processing (SIP) is a widely-studied framework for understanding why some children have difficulty getting along with peers. A particularly well-known SIP model developed by Crick and Dodge (1994) describes six stages of information processing that children cycle through when evaluating a particular social situation: encoding (attending to and encoding the relevant cues), interpreting (making a judgment about what is going on), clarifying goals (deciding what their goal is in the particular situation), generating responses (identifying different behavioral strategies for attaining the decided upon goal), deciding on the response (evaluating the likelihood that each potential strategy will help reach their goal and choosing which strategy to implement), and performing the response (doing the chosen response). It is assumed that the steps outlined above operate in real time and frequently outside of conscious awareness. Numerous studies have shown that unpopular children have deficits at multiple stages of the SIP model. For example, they frequently attend to fewer social cues before deciding on peers’ intent, are more likely to assume that peers have acted towards them with hostile intent, are less likely to adopt pro-social goals, are more likely to access aggressive strategies for handling potential conflicts, evaluate aggressive responses more favorably, and are less skillful at enacting assertive and prosocial strategies.

Deficits in social skills are one of the defining characteristics of children with ASD. These impairments manifest in making and keeping friends, communicating feelings appropriately, demonstrating self-control, controlling emotions, solving social problems, managing anger, and generalizing learned social skills across settings. Elliott and Gresham (1991) indicated that social skills are primarily acquired through learning (observation, modeling, rehearsal, & feedback); comprise specific, discrete verbal and nonverbal behaviors; entail both effective and appropriate initiations and responses; maximize social reinforcement; are influenced by characteristics of environment; and that deficits/excesses in social performance can be specified and targeted for intervention. Social skills can be conceptualized as a narrow, discrete response (i.e., initiating a greeting) or as a broader set of skills associated with social problem solving. The former approach results in the generation of an endless list of discrete skills that are assessed for their presence/absence and are then targeted for instruction. Although this approach has an intuitive appeal and is easily understood, the child can easily become dependent on the teacher/parent in order to learn each skill.

An alternative approach focuses on teaching a problem solving model that the child is able to apply independently. Rather than focusing on teaching a specific behavioral skill, the focus is on teaching a social problem solving model that the learner would be able to use as a “tool box.” The well-used saying “give a person a fish and she eats for a day but teach her to fish and she eats for a lifetime” is particularly relevant. The social problem solving approach offers the promise of helping the child with ASD to become a better problem solver, thereby promoting greater independence in social situations and throughout life.

After many years of conducting social skills training using the specific skill approach, the authors have developed a model of social problem solving that uses the easily learned acronym of POWER. The steps of POWER-Solving® include:

P ut problem into words

O bserve feelings

W ork out your goal

E xplore solutions

R eview plan

Each of the five steps of POWER-Solving® has been previously identified as reliably distinguishing between children with emotional/behavioral disorders and psychologically well-adjusted individuals. The ability to “Put problem into words” is critical in order to start the problem solving process. Children with ASD often have difficulties finding the words to identify a problem. Thus, the first step in this approach involves direct training in the use of the rubric “I was… and then…” Upon entering the classroom and finding a peer in his seat Joey immediately pushed the peer in an attempt to get him out of his seat. Through the use of POWER-Solving® Joey was taught to articulate “I was walking into the classroom and then I saw that Billy was in my seat.”

The second step of “Observe feelings” was addressed by helping Joey develop a feelings vocabulary (e.g., angry, frustrated, scared, sad) as well as measuring the intensity of these emotions using a scale from one to ten, with a one being “very weak” and a ten being “very strong.” Photographs and drawings were used extensively to capitalize on his strong visual skills.

The third step of POWER-Solving®, “Work out your goal?” involves identifying the goal and the motivation to reach the chosen goal. This critical step sets the stage for what follows. The goal must be specific and measurable, consistent with Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) principles. Joey was able to identify that his goal consisted of two parts. First, he wanted to get Billy out of his seat and second, he wanted him to still be his friend. He reported that his desire to reach this goal was a nine on the ten-point scale.

The fourth step of POWER-Solving® involves “Explore solutions.” Socially skilled individuals are able to generate a range of effective solutions but those with impairments are more limited and often apply the same rigid solution over and over again in spite of repeated ineffectiveness. Joey was taught to “brainstorm,” which involves generating as many solutions as possible that might reach the stated goal, provided the solution is safe, fair, and effective. Joey was able to identify that approaching Billy and saying “Excuse me but I need to sit in my seat now” would help him to accomplish his goal(s). Behavioral rehearsal, combined with coaching and feedback, helped Joey to become fluent in applying this solution.

The final step of POWER-Solving®, “Review plan,” involved Joey reviewing his plan to use this skill the next time the situation presented and to reward himself by saying “I am proud of myself for figuring this out.”

POWER-Solving® has been applied successfully in multiple settings such as the classroom, a summer treatment program, clinical settings and home environments. The curriculum is systematic and relies heavily on visual cues and supports. Children are taught how to problem-solve first using their “toolbox” (i.e., the five steps of POWER-Solving®). The children are presented with specific unit lessons on each of the five steps of POWER-Solving®. All children have an opportunity to practice each step of POWER-Solving®. After learning each step of POWER, the children have acquired a “toolbox” which they can begin to apply to social situations.

When teaching social skills, it is important to coach the children through behavioral rehearsal activities to promote skill acquisition, performance, generalization and fluency. Additionally, daily activities reinforce these skills, some of which include designing their own feelings thermometer, developing novel products via group collaboration, and developing a skit to teach a specific skill.

To increase students’ performance of the desired skills, use of a token economy may be helpful, whereby points are earned during the day for displaying appropriate behavior, demonstrating a predetermined individualized social behavioral objective and for using the POWER-Solving® steps. At the end of every day, points could be exchanged for a reward. In addition to the direct instructional format, incidental teaching should be used in anticipation of a challenging situation as well as a consequence for failure to use the steps when confronted with a specific problem. An experienced social skills coach, generalization strategies, and a systematic plan to teach and reinforce skills are critical for success.

Please feel free to contact us at Behavior Therapy Associates for more information about best practices for social skills training, as well as information regarding the POWER-Solving curriculum. We can be reached at 732-873-1212, via email [email protected] or on website at www.BehaviorTherapyAssociates.com .

Crick, N.R., & Dodge, K.A. (1994). A review and reformulation of social information-processing mechanisms in children’s social adjustment.  Psychological Bulletin , 115, 74–101.

Elliott, S.T. & Gresham, F. M. (1991).  Social skills intervention guide: Practical strategies for social skills training . Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service.

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9 Activities to Encourage Problem-Solving in Autistic Kids

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Building up our kiddo’s confidence and skills are so important when looking at short-term and long-term goals. One important skill to work on is problem-solving.

I know I’m guilty of not giving my little guy enough time to solve something on his own if I’m not actively thinking about it. Can’t get something to work? Momma’s got it. Can’t reach something? Momma’s got it. It can be so automatic to help.

But problem-solving for yourself is extremely important, and that is no different for our sprouts. We have to let them try on their own, then seek help after trying.

So let’s dive into the 9 activities to encourage problem-solving in autistic kids!

I think it’s important to note that depending on your child’s skill level and interests that not all of these will be winners. But I believe with some imagination and thinking you can adapt things to suit your child’s needs (in most situations).

#1 Scavenger Hunts

How many free scavenger hunts do we come across on Pinterest when scrolling for activities for our kids? Whether it’s looking for a list of items or deciphering clues, they’re encouraged to problem solve. Plus, It’s a great activity to do inside or outside and do together to get moving around.

Here’s a few I found on Pinterest to get you started:

• Indoor Scavenger Hunt for Kids Free Printable – Thrifty NW Mom (thriftynorthwestmom.com)
• Outdoor Scavenger Hunt and S’mores Printables – Clean and Scentsible
• 30 Best Scavenger Hunt Ideas {Free Printables} – Play Party Plan

Puzzles are obviously great for problem-solving because they’re trying to put pieces together that usually only fit one way. Having to turn pieces, focus, and think all encourage problem-solving in our kiddos.

• Jigsaw puzzles
• Rubik’s Cube
• Tangrams 
• Shape Sorters
• Some Ideas on Amazon I Found:

#3 Board Games/Games

There are so many board games that can help with problem-solving because they encourage strategic thinking and planning. Obviously chess, checkers, and Monopoly are the first few to come to mind.

Here are a few more ideas:

• Jenga – this is fun for everyone, but having your sprout have to stop and think before pulling out a piece and figure out how to not be the one to make the tower topple is fun problem-solving. Plus the tower toppling is fun for the kiddos too!
• Don’t Rock the Boat – My son likes the little penguins and likes the ship falling over. It’s fun to do hand-over-hand or if you kiddo can place the pieces on the boat on their own.
• Connect 4 – This is a nostalgic game for me to play, but the fine motor skills involved and problem-solving to get 4 and block your opponent is perfect for sprouts.
• Don’t Break the Ice
• Yeti in my Spaghetti
• Pancake Pile-Up – The instructions say it “helps children develop important gross motor skills, like balance and coordination.” Also, that this helps “children practice following a sequence, a beginning math skill.”

#4 Building Blocks and Structures

Another way to encourage problem-solving is using building materials and either giving your child instructions to follow or let them imagine and build their own. Full disclosure: my son is a destroyer! So I build things and he’ll figure out ways to tear it apart. Still problem-solving if you ask me.

Some ideas for you!

• Classic Blocks – make a block train, pile them up way high without tipping over, make a fort!
• Magnetic building tiles – there are so many designs to come up with these or just make boxes out of the tiles; whatever you kiddo can do and enjoys
• LEGO – they have so many sets and designs that the options are endless
• Bristle Block Stackadoos – we found these at Target and my son loves the texture and this is one he loves for me to build things and he tears them apart.

#5 Obstacle Courses

I love obstacle courses because they’re fun, but they’re working problem-solving skills and gross motor skills. You can find sets on Amazon, but it can get pricey. If your kid is like mine, there’s tons of toys and random things in the house to make obstacle courses from.

You can use Pringles cans as cones, have them hop over toys, step on sturdy boxes.

Some Set-up Ideas:

• 20 Amazing Backyard Obstacle Courses – Happy Toddler Playtime
• 10 Obstacle Courses You Can Set Up at Home – Tiny Beans
• 15 Amazing Indoor and Outdoor Toddler Obstacle Course Ideas – Mom Junction

My son’s physical therapist used Jumping Stepping Stones and he loves hopping and walking on those as an obstacle course. So my friend bought it for him as a birthday present and he has a blast on them:

#6 Escape Rooms

This is all problem-solving with clues and riddles to figure out. This is not for everyone, but if your kid has a knack for things like this, it could be a really fun outing together.

Or, Pinterest has some neat ideas for Escape Rooms at home. I tried to find a few to get you started:

• Make Your Own Escape Room Challenge for Kids ( with a FREE Printable) – The Activity Mom
• 40 DIY Escape Room Ideas at Home – Hands On Teaching Ideas
• How to Build Escape Room Challenges – Pathway 2 Success

Cooking can involve following a recipe or letting your child go nuts and create their own recipe. If following a recipe, they have to identify and find ingredients, figure out what cutting something in quarters looks like, measuring, cooking times, portions.

If they’re making their own recipe then they’re using their imaginations while trying to make something edible. It can even be fun to try to problem-solve why something wasn’t edible!

I just let my son shake the season salt on some green beans I was cooking the other day. He was unimpressed to say the least lol. His diet is basically snacks, Kroger chocolate chip waffles, and chicken fries, so we’ll be working on pouring his own snacks, toaster use, and microwave use.

Some ideas to get you going:

• Chocolate Chip PB Banana Sandwiches – Taste of Home
• Easy Apple Bites – Chop Chop Family
• Recipes Kids Can Make (Broken down into Age Groups!) – Momables

I love this suggestion because it’s challenging, but it’s also teaching a skill that could turn into a career later on in life. And if your kid finds it fun and engaging, then that’s a real win!

Some suggestions I found:

• The First 3 Coding Lessons You Need to Teach Kids – Carly & Adam Osmo Coding Starter Kit 5-10+
• Learning Resources Code & Go Robot Mouse 4+

#9 Experimenting

Finding fun experiments to do and helping your child explore the world is another form of problem-solving. Not everything is going to be a winner; for instance, my son refused to touch the Oobleck his class made for Dr. Seuss week. But he did enjoy petting the STEM teacher’s Madagascar cockroach.

Suggestions:

• Classic Diet Coke and Mentos Explosion – Scholastic
• Engaging STEM Activities with Pipe Cleaners – Stemtropolis (He’s a teacher!)
• Science Activities with Apples – Stemtropolis
• STEM Activities Using the Scientific Method for Kids – Stemtropolis

This is just a range of suggestions that your child may or may not enjoy; or they may or may not be at the level to understand. All our kiddos are different ages, stages, skill levels, so having more options to choose from is better.

I know my sprout would not be interested in cooking, and I wouldn’t be able to hold his attention long enough to even get him to show him how to mix ingredients in a bowl. Don’t force these things and make you both miserable. This should be fun and engaging first because we’re not really learning if we’re too upset to comprehend what we’re doing.

Did you try any of these suggestions? I’d especially love to know if you have your own suggestions or even modified one to suit your little sprout! Let me know in the comments or hit me up with an email. I’d love to hear from you no matter what it is!

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Hi, I love these suggestions! It’s so nice to have new ideas since I seem to get stuck on doing the same things and need to remember to allow the kiddos to experience a range of things, even if it’s not their very favorite things all the time!

I’m the same way with my son! He’s stubborn lol. I wrote this as some ideas for myself as well because it’s easy to get stuck on the same thing. And you know the kids will let you know if it’s not their thing haha.

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Free resources, contingency maps for behavior problem-solving (freebie).

Sharing is caring!

Contingency maps are a cognitive-behavioral method for helping an individual to understand the consequences of behavioral choices.  They are particularly useful for teaching individuals to use functionally equivalent behaviors as alternatives to problem behavior.  

They also are sometimes referred to as consequence maps and they are essentially graphic organizers for behavior.  Michelle Garcia Winner uses similar strategies for Social Thinking that she calls Social Mapping .  

Contingency maps are a visual support that has been around in many forms for a number of years.  The examples below come from a strategy we used to call visual problem solvers about 15 years ago.

How Do Contingency Maps Work? 

Essentially, they are set up so that the student can see the consequence of the alternative behavior and the consequence (typically the naturally occurring consequence) of the negative behavior.  

So in this example, If the student gets worried, and uses his calming strategies, the outcome is usually that he feels better. If he gets worreid and doesn’t use the calming strategies, the outcome is often that he starts to scream and become more upset.

Evidence Base and Effectiveness

As a visual support strategy there is evidence for the use of a variety of visual cues to increase independence and reduce problem behavior , and contingency maps fit in that body of literature.  Specifically there have been two peer-reviewed articles looking at contingency maps as a way to reduce problem behavior.  

Using a single-subject research design, Brown and Mirenda (2006) showed that the use of visual contingency maps were more effective than providing verbal contingencies to an individual for initiating and completing routine tasks [ click here to read the abstract ].  Brown and Mirenda used the contingency map as part of a functional equivalence training program (also known as functional communication training ).  The contingency map showed the alternative behavior that was designed to replace the challenging behavior by serving the same function.

Tobin and Simpson (2012) have a great article in Teaching Exceptional Children describing data with another individual, using a single-subject design, that showed that a contingency map (they refer to it as a consequence map) was effective in reducing challenging behavior (decreased the frequency of disrobing) of a student.  If you are a member of the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) –and I highly recommend it if you are a special education professional–you have access to the article.  If not, the abstract is available here as well .  This article also has a great description of how to implement contingency maps as well as examples.

Developing and Using Contingency Maps

Define the behavior.

Essentially to use a contingency, first you need to identify the specific behavior you want to change.  You need to define it clearly and make sure that you and the student understand what it looks like.  It also helps to take a baseline of the frequency of the behavior so you can determine if your contingency map works.

Determine the function

Next, you need to determine the function that the behavior serves.  That is the topic of another post to cover, however, I have written about in the past and there are some tools available at this post.  

The purpose of knowing the function of the behavior is to determine what appropriate behavior will serve the same function that you can use to replace it with.  For instance, if your student hits to escape from work tasks, think about teaching him to ask for a break.  Then this would be part of your graphic organizer.

Create the visual

Third, you need to create the contingency map, and that’s where I’ve got your back in several formats.

Below is a link to a freebie set of contingency maps along with some universal “no” signs to use with them.  They are editable in PowerPoint and available in the Free Resources Library and in my TpT Store.

Essentially a contingency map makes the statement that

• when this happens (typically the identified trigger for problem behavior from your functional assessment),
• if the student engages in the appropriate alternative behavior (e.g., asking for a break),
• he or she will get a consequence he or she enjoys (i.e., a reinforcer).  
• If he or she engages in the negative behavior then the positive consequence does not occur.

Sometimes the good choices are colored green and the poor choices are colored red, as in the examples below.

Steps for Using Contingency Maps

Contingency maps can be written or visual depending on the skills of your students.  They are good visual cues to use for redirection since they show the consequence of behaviors.

In this example, the student’s behavior has been determined to be functioning to escape work situations.   So, if he raises his hand and asks for a break, he gets a break to sit on the bean bag.  If he doesn’t ask for a break and runs away, he does not get the bean bag.

After you have created the visual, it is not a magic bullet and it won’t work without teaching.  You have to present the visual contingency and provide at least a brief explanation about how it works.  Sometimes a social story or social narrative can be helpful for this. I would also practice the contingencies through a role play and make sure you have it available when it is needed to be used.  

I would present it with as little verbal interaction as possible, just to lessen either the attention from the verbal explanation as a possible reinforcer for the problem behavior or to keep from escalating the behavior with verbal demands for some students.

Make sure to reinforce the alternative behavior with the promised contingency.  It is important to make sure that the reinforcer is meaningful for the alternative behavior and reinforcing.  Tools for finding reinforcers for students with ASD can be found in this post .  

It also helps for the consequence to be naturally occurring to help the behavior maintain in the absence of the map over time.  So for instance, if I ask my friends questions, they will want to talk to me, but if I hit my friends, they will not want to talk to me.

Assess and Fade

Take data on whether the frequency of the behavior is decreasing.  If it is working, then over time you can fade the use of the visual map as the student becomes more independent and the negative behavior reduces in frequency.

Contingency Map Options

Contingency Maps are part of several of my Behavioral Toolkits. I’ve noted where each one came from in the pictures above. But they are available in my Making Mistakes Toolkit (obviously focused on handling making errors) and in my Managing Anxiety Toolkit . Click the pictures below to grab either of them.

Click on either of the pictures below to check out the toolkits in the store

I have also created some templates for you to use.   Click here for the free version through my TPT store.   They are editable in PowerPoint to add your own pictures(or upload to Google Slides) or Keynote to add your own pictures on to them. There are some pictures included in the pdf version as well that you could use with velcro.

  Remember that if students are not great at comprehending what they have read, they may still need pictures.   You could also laminate the chart and use a dry erase marker to make a contingency map on the fly.

Clearly, contingency maps are an invaluable tool for educators working with students who exhibit challenging behavior. By providing a visual representation of expectations and consequences, these maps empower both teachers and students to take proactive steps towards positive behavior management.So, why wait? Grab your contingency maps now and start creating a more conducive learning environment for your students!

• Read more about: Behavior Support , Visual Supports

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20 Activities for Kids with Autism: Play, Learn, Grow!

Play is a fundamental part of your child’s growth. Through play, your child learns to communicate, share ideas, express feelings, and understand others — not just with words, but through their actions and expressions. It also allows children to develop an interest in future careers or hobbies, but the best part? You can do it together.

We’ve created a list of 20 fun activities for kids with autism , all of which are meant to support your child’s development. 

Let’s play!

Great Activities for Autistic Kids & Families to Enjoy at Home

From quiet, introspective tasks to lively physical games, there’s something here to light up every child’s day. Our selection of free autism activities guarantees your child finds joy, comfort, and challenge in their everyday play.

1. Balancing Beam

Set up a balancing beam using planks of wood or simply tape on your floor. Guiding your child across this beam improves their balance and coordination, and turns a fun challenge into a developmental win. It’s a fantastic way to introduce a bit of playful physical activity into your day.

2. Shadow Puppet Theater

Create cardstock shadow puppets to bring stories to life in your own shadow puppet theater. This activity combines art and storytelling to spark your child’s imagination. It turns storytime into an interactive adventure, perfect for winding down during indoor evenings.

3. Water Play Stations

Set up a water play station filled with various containers, funnels, and toys for those warm, sunny days. This setup is ideal for refreshing summer activities for children with autism , as it encourages endless sensory exploration and provides a sense of calm amidst splashes and laughter.

4. Music Jam Session

Grab some household items and start a music jam session. Discovering sounds, rhythms and dancing together not only fills the room with laughter but also enriches your child’s sensory experiences. Kids living with any type of autism can benefit from music, even those who are nonverbal. It’s a fun way to express their musical creativity, whether solo or with a family band.

5. Garden Together

Simple gardening, such as planting seeds or caring for a small plant, provides a relaxing way to reconnect with nature. This activity also teaches your child about life cycles and responsibility.

6. Create a Sensory Box

Fill a box with various household items with different textures, such as fabric scraps, rice, or foam pieces. This activity allows your child to explore tactile sensations in the comfort and safety of home. 

Sensory activities for kids with low functioning autism are especially beneficial because they provide them with a gentle yet engaging way to interact with their surroundings.

7. Homemade Puzzles

Turn family photos or beloved illustrations from your child’s favorite books into puzzles. Laminate these images, then cut them into pieces. Working on these personalized puzzles together not only sharpens problem-solving skills but also strengthens your child’s connection to familiar images and cherished memories.

Just as visual cues in puzzles help in understanding, they can also make explaining autism to kids clearer by creating a connection to familiar and positive images.

8. DIY Light Box 

Make a DIY light box to give transparent and translucent objects a soft, captivating glow. This creative project is an ideal component of indoor activities for an autistic child , as it improves visual focus and discrimination while also turning simple objects into a source of wonder.

9. Themed Treasure Hunts

Set off on an adventure right at home with themed treasure hunts, whether inside or outside. These hunts can infuse your day with excitement and a bit of mystery. Use everyday items as hidden gems and visual cues for guidance, and make sure the themes are appropriate for your child’s interests.

10. Balloon Tennis

Play a lively game of balloon tennis with simple paddles. This game promotes active play, coordination, and healthy turn-taking. It’s a flexible and inclusive group activity that works well for kids with autism.

11. Build with Recyclables

Encourage your child to see the potential in everyday items by crafting with recyclables, such as tubes, cardboard boxes, and containers. This is one of the best activities for kids with autism who enjoy hands-on projects because cardboard creations can range from simple structures to massive forts — a practical and fun lesson in sustainability.

12. Bubble Wrap Path

Transform your floor into a sensory adventure with a path of bubble wrap. Every step and hop results in satisfying pops, which makes this a hit for children who love tactile and auditory feedback. It’s an easy way to turn movement into a game of discovery.

13. Nature Collage Making

On your next walk, collect natural treasures like twigs, leaves, and flowers for a collage. This peaceful activity encourages your child to connect with the natural world and allows for artistic expression. 

Making collages can be a serene solo task during a quiet afternoon or a shared group activity, ideal for fostering teamwork and appreciation for nature’s beauty.

14. Interactive Reading Nooks

Set up a special corner filled with picture books and objects that bring stories to life through touch and sight. This cozy spot can be a great addition to existing daily activities for your autistic child because it becomes a sanctuary for stories, with each book read together taking them on a sensory-rich journey.

15. Story Cubes

Transform cardboard cubes into engines of imagination by decorating each side with images of characters, scenes, and actions. Tossing these cubes to make up new stories strengthens creativity, language skills, and family bonds. It’s an interactive way to create stories of adventure and mystery together.

16. Sensory Walks

Take your child on sensory walks in the garden, the park, or through different rooms at home, paying attention to the various textures, colors, and smells that surround you. This activity is a practical application of sensory play activities that deepen their connection to the environment and encourage your child to explore and interact with their surroundings in a thoughtful manner.

17. Miniature Worlds

Invite your child to create detailed miniature worlds within shoeboxes or small garden spaces. This activity, whether set in a fairy tale land or a natural setting, fosters storytelling and imagination while developing fine motor skills. It is beneficial for both individual and group activities for children with autism , as it allows for shared stories and creations.

18. Cook Together

Share the joy of cooking by involving your child in preparing simple meals, like no-bake treats or creative sandwiches. This shared activity teaches valuable life skills while also providing a sensory playground of textures and flavors. When they successfully prepare something tasty, it can boost their confidence and provide them with a sense of accomplishment.

19. DIY Obstacle Courses

Boost your child’s love for movement by creating obstacle courses that match their abilities and spark their curiosity. Guide them to crawl under ropes, leap over cushions, and zigzag around cones. This fun challenge promotes physical growth and encourages problem-solving.

20. Role-Play Scenarios

Role-play scenarios with costumes or puppets can help your child learn about different social situations and emotions. In order to practice and understand complex social dynamics and emotional expressions in a relatable manner, this type of creative play is an essential component of social skills activities for autism .

Selecting the Right Activities for Your Child

Autistic children exhibit different learning styles , so it’s important to adapt play to each child’s specific needs and preferences. Here are some factors to consider when selecting activities that will appeal to your child:

• Start with what inspires them . Whether it’s dinosaurs, space, or music, adapting activities to kids’ interests increases their engagement and joy.
• Incorporate visual aids . Visual cues can simplify understanding and execution of tasks, especially if your kid is a visual learner.
• Choose activities that play to their strengths . If they excel at puzzles, consider complex building sets or coloring books. Also, pay attention to their sensory preferences. 
• Keep instructions simple and direct . Break down tasks into manageable steps to avoid overwhelm and encourage independence.

There you have it — the best (and simplest!) activities you can do at home to help your child better understand their surroundings and strengthen your bond. If certain activities don’t resonate as hoped, remember, Abacus Therapies is here to offer additional support .   

Have fun exploring these playful moments together!

What activities are good for children with autism?

Children with autism find joy and calm in structured activities that blend routine with exploration and creativity. Puzzles, for example, captivate with their complex elements, sensory bins filled with rice or water beads soothe with their textures, and arts and crafts provide them with freedom to express themselves.

What keeps a autistic child busy?

Aligning activities with their passions and strengths keeps autistic children deeply engaged. For instance, mechanically inclined kids can immerse themselves in assembling LEGOs or other building toys. Educational games that make learning interactive spark both fun and development, especially in areas like language and problem-solving.

What things are good for autistic child?

A predictable routine, as well as sensory-friendly toys and items like weighted blankets and noise-canceling headphones, can help children with autism meet their needs for consistency and balance. Also, visual aids such as picture schedules make daily tasks easier.

What are ADL activities for autism?

Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) for children with autism are practical tasks aimed at building independence in personal care and daily chores. These might include dressing oneself using Velcro-fastened clothing, brushing teeth with a step-by-step visual guide, or participating in meal preparation with simple tasks like washing vegetables.

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71+ Free Social Problem-Solving Scenarios

Do you have kiddos who struggle with their social problem-solving skills? Teach your students the simple process of how to solve a problem along with having them review how well their solution worked or didn’t work.

Why Teach Problem Solving Skills?

Learning to problem solve is an essential skill that is used not only throughout childhood but also into adulthood. Social problem solving is the ability to change or adapt to undesirable situations that arise throughout our day.

On a daily basis, a child will encounter social problems that they will need to solve.

Anything from:

• arguing with another student
• to hurting a friend’s feelings
• to having a difficult conversation
• working with others

Start with Small Problems

Many of the “problems” children encounter are often small problems which the child may be over-reacting to, such as wanting a different coloring crayon or wanting to be first in line, however, these small problems are still very real to the child.

Practicing problem-solving with these small problems can be a great learning opportunity. Children can practice problem-solving with a small problem which can help them learn how to handle bigger problems in the future.

Problem Solving Importance

Social problem-solving skills are critical to a child’s social interactions, personal and professional relationships. A child’s ability to handle change, cope with stress, and handle challenges improves with a child’s ability to successfully solve social problems.

The ultimate goal is that the child will be able to solve social problems all on their own, but until they can independently solve a problem they will need to learn how to communicate and self-advocate to positively solve their problems.  

Steps to Problem Solving

Children can be taught how to problem solve through a guided process of breaking down the problem and using simple steps to solve the problem.

Learning specific steps to problem-solving can allow children to remember how to solve a problem when they become overwhelmed or stressed.

Although learning to solve a problem independently can take some time and practice it is well worth the investment to have a child who can eventually solve most social situations in a positive manner on their own.

What we learnt about solving problems is don't freak out, if one thing doesn't work , try something else out. And work together as a team. #melthammathsweek #MELTHAMPUPILVOICE @problemsolveit pic.twitter.com/iVm1Im4Aue — yr6melthamce (@yr6melthamce) February 4, 2019

Problem Solving Form

Teach your students the 4 steps to becoming a social problem-solver.

• Identify the problem. For instance, start by having your student identify the social problem.
• Create three solutions. Also, have your student come up with three different solutions that they could use to solve the problem that they identified.
• Identify the consequences. Then, identify the consequence for each individual solution.
• Pick the best solution.  Lastly, have your student identify which of their three solutions is the best choice Then have your student put into words why they think that solution is the best solution.

Problem Solving Review Form

After your students go through the social problem-solver have them use the social problem-solving review form.

• What happened.  For instance, after your student tried their solution have them explain what happened next.
• Review the results. Also, have your student identify whether or not their solution got them the results they wanted.
• Use this solution again. Furthermore, have your student identify whether or not they would use this solution again in the future to solve the same or similar problem.
• What would you do differently? Finally, have your student explain what they would do differently if they didn’t get the results they wanted or if they wouldn’t use that solution again in the future.

71+ Social Problem Scenarios + 6 Blank Scenarios

Use the 71 social problem-solving scenarios to have your students get great experience practicing how to solve a social problem.

Also, included are 6 blank scenarios. Then laminate them so you can use them over and over again. Therefore, create social problems that the student experiences and needs help solving.

Wordless Video teaching Problem Solving

Watch this super cute wordless animation with your students and have them discuss the problem they see and how to best solve the problem.

Use this as a fun practice example to get your students started towards learning how to problem-solve.

Demonstrate Through Modeling

Model and discuss empathy.

First and foremost, children need to understand how another person might be feeling in a given situation in order to become a good social problem solver. The student needs to learn how to “stand in someone else’s shoes” for a little bit.

One way you can work on this skill is during the reading time you can focus on how a particular character in the story might be feeling.

Ask questions, such as:

• “How do they feel right now?”
• “How would you feel in that same situation?”
• “Why do you think they feel that way?”

Model Problem-Solving Skills as the Teacher

When you are faced with a problem you can solve the problem by thinking aloud for the students to hear how you solve a problem.

You can state the problem, then come up with possible solutions, then identify the possible consequences to each solution, then pick and explain why a solution is the best option.

For example, you could say, “I was hoping to take the class outside for a stress walk around the track before the reading test, but the problem is that it is raining outside. I could still take you outside, but then you will get wet, or we could walk the halls, but then we’d have to be really quiet because there are other classes learning, or we could just skip the walk and take the reading test, but then you might not do as well on the test. I think based on all of those solutions the best solution will be to walk the hallway, but you guys will have to promise to be quiet so that we don’t disrupt other classes.

Modeling the problem-solving process can be very helpful for the students to watch, observe, and later implement themselves.

Teach Communication

Have students communicate how they are feeling.

Teaching your students to share their emotions in a respectful way can improve their ability to problem-solve.

Have students use an “I” sentence frame, such as, “I feel _____ (insert feeling word) when _____ (identify what made you feel that way).”

For example, “I felt sad when Jackson broke my favorite pencil” or “I was mad when I wasn’t picked to be first in line.”

This way students can communicate how they are feeling using honest and open communication. Teaching students to appropriately communicate their emotions can help solve some social problems from the beginning.

Encourage Independency

Encourage your student to problem solve.

If your student is struggling to problem solve independently encourage them to do so using open-ended questions.

• “How could you fix this problem?”
• “What would be a fair solution?”
• “What would happen if you used that solution?”

Let the Student try to Problem Solve Independently

Give your students the space to try and solve their own problems using the guided strategies. Try not to come running to their rescue for every little problem.

Some problems are small and a great opportunity for the student to learn and practice. If an adult does all of the problem solving for a student then what are they really learning?

Give your students the time and space they need to practice solving small problems on their own. Of course, if it is a bigger or more serious problem then have an adult help guide the problem-solving process.

Tell an Adult

Remind your students that there are still some problems that are too big for them to solve on their own and that it is okay to get help from an adult to solve big problems.

For example, if the student doesn’t feel safe, someone is being hurt physically or emotionally, or if they tried to solve a problem independently but it didn’t work and they need help. Let them know that it’s okay to tell an adult.

Teach How to Disagree and How to Make Up

Discuss how to disagree respectfully.

Remind your student that they won’t always agree with their teacher, friends, classmate, or parents and that’s okay. Even the people we like might have different opinions, interests, and likes than we do.

However, even if we disagree with someone we should still treat them with respect. Treating someone with respect means to not call them names, ignore them, yell or hit them. It means that you do try to create solutions that both parties can agree with and to apologize when we hurt others’ feelings.

Role-Play How to Make Up

Practice in everyday life how to make up after a social problem .

Students are really having to stretch their brains today. It's @NSPCC #NumberDay and @problemsolveit are challenging Y9 and 10 to solve the escape room boxes. It's not as easy as it looks! The promise of a few sweet treats for the winners seems to be helping though! pic.twitter.com/AxRRJnJIv2 — CongletonHS (@CongletonHS) February 2, 2018

Be sure to get your free social problem solver today below! I hope you and your students love this freebie.

Have your students use task card scenarios to help them identify how they and others might feel in different social scenarios. Be sure to discuss the problem, identify possible solutions, identify the consequences of those possible solutions, and then based on those consequences pick the best solution.

Make social problem-solving a game by telling the students that they are social detectives and that it is their job to use what they know about social rules to help them identify the possible and best solutions.

Start practicing today with 71+ free social problem social task cards! Do your students need more practice?

Be sure to check out my other freebie for 31 wordless animated videos to teach problem-solving and so much more.

Make Problem Solving Easier with this Freebie!

Download yours today to get started.

Get More Problem Solving Time Saving Materials

Next, be sure to check out the following time-saving materials to continue to teach your students how to solve their social problems in addition to this freebie.

Weekly Social Pragmatics Homework

• Weekly problem-solving.   Send home a  weekly homework page  that includes a problem-solving scenario plus an idiom and a conversational practice scenario.

Restorative Justice Problem Solving Flip Book

• Restorative justice graphic visual.  Use this graphic visual to help your student  restore a social relationship  after a social problem.

Self-Advocating Role-Play Scenarios

• Self-advocating in high school.  Teach your high schoolers the process to  self-advocate  for what they need.

5th-12th Grade Life Skills Problem Solving

• Life skills problem-solving.  In addition, this  life skills differentiated bundle  includes a problem-solving lesson plan.

I recommend you read Problem Solving Wheel: Help Kids Solve Their Own Problems , 61+ Free Fillable SLP Planner Pages 2020-2021 , 430+ Free Multisyllabic Words List Activity Bundle , or 432+ Free IEP Goal Bank to Save You Time posts because they include freebies as well and who doesn’t want more freebies!

Got questions? Leave a comment. Let’s chat!

Monday 30th of January 2023

Hello! I have entered my name and email twice (yesterday & today) to receive to 71+ Free Social Problem-Solving Senarios, but I have not received anything yet. Not even an email back to mine in order to subcribe. Thanks for your help! Tracy

Melissa Berg

Tuesday 31st of January 2023

Hi Tracy, Thanks so much for reaching out! Sorry about that. We went ahead and sent you an email with the PDF attached. Wishing you all my best, Melissa

Problem Solving Skills

Tuesday 30th of August 2022

I truly love your site. Excellent colors, theme and writing. Thanks for sharing.

Laura Ricca

Monday 11th of April 2022

Tuesday 12th of April 2022

Hi Laura, I'm glad you found this resource helpful. Melissa

Modified Mental Health and Suicide Prevention - Speech Therapy Store

Monday 11th of May 2020

[…] 71+ FREE SOCIAL PROBLEM-SOLVING SCENARIOS […]

Problem Solving Wheel: Help Kids Solve Their Own Problems - Speech Therapy Store

Monday 4th of May 2020

[…] 71+ Free Social Problem Solving Task Cards Scenarios […]

News and Knowledge

Read the latest issue of the Oaracle

Teaching Autistic Students to Solve Math Word Problems

August 29, 2022

By: Jenny Root, Ph.D., BCBA

Categories: How To , Education

In the past three months, how many times have you had no choice but to use cash to make a purchase? Or tell time using an analog clock?  

Although you have undoubtedly made purchases, it is likely you used a card or smart device, especially if the purchases were made online. To check the time, you probably glanced at a digital clock on a screen or even just asked Alexa, Google Home, or another artificial intelligence device.   

While the functions of many activities of daily living, such as making purchases and telling time, have remained the same over time, how we accomplish these tasks has changed dramatically as technology has evolved.   

Math instruction for autistic students has historically had a limited focus on “functional” skills in order to prepare them for independence in their adult lives. Yet in addition to mastering a series of discrete skills, autistic young adults need to be able to problem solve . This includes:  

• Being aware of when there is a problem.  
• Identifying a reasonable strategy.  
• Monitoring their progress accurately.  
• Adapting as necessary.  

Word problem solving is one way to teach students how, when, and why to apply math skills in real-world situations they will encounter in a future we may not be able to envision yet.   

These research-supported strategies can help teachers and parents teach autistic students to solve word problems using modified schema-based instruction (MSBI). MSBI is an evidence-based practice for teaching word problem solving.  

Create a meaningful task.

Word problems need to depict a realistic and meaningful problem. This will help students better understand the “why” behind word problem solving and support generalization to everyday situations. You can begin planning by identifying high-interest, real-world contexts when the targeted math skills could be used, such as familiar community locations, family routines, or preferred activities. The quantities represented in the problem should be realistic for the situation. Use technology to build background knowledge for generalization by showing short videos or pictures, such as videos of people making purchases using a credit card or comparing rideshare costs between two apps.  

Consider accessibility.

Both the materials and word problems themselves need to be accessible to students. The reading level, quantities represented, structure, and visual supports can all be adjusted to address barriers students may face. If independently reading the problem is a barrier, students can use technology to access text-to-speech or ask a skilled reader—a parent, peer, or teacher—to read it aloud to them. Quantities in the problem can be reduced to match a student’s numeracy skills (e.g., quantities under 10) or they can be provided with a calculator for efficiency.   

Research has shown that autistic students can successfully fade this equation template once they become fluent in problem solving.   

Focus on problem types, not keywords or operations.

Teaching word problem solving using MSBI may differ from your prior approaches to math instruction. Many teachers and parents teach operations sequentially, meaning once addition is mastered, they move on to subtraction, then multiplication, then division. But this developmental mindset can put unnecessary ceilings on student opportunity by having a “not ready for” mindset. Waiting for students to be “ready for” problem solving by overly focusing on their skill deficits will hold them back from meaningful, age-appropriate instruction.   

MSBI also does not teach students to focus on keywords to identify operations, such as “more” meaning add and “left” meaning subtract. While this trick may initially work for some simple problems, it doesn’t help students conceptually understand the problem. Real-world problems won’t have keywords.  

Instead of teaching by operation or focusing on keywords, research has shown when autistic students learn to identify and represent the problem by the schema (pattern of problem structure), they are able to independently solve, discriminate between, and generalize problems. There are two categories of schemas, or problem structures. Additive problems use addition and subtraction operations and include group/total, compare/difference, and change schemas. Multiplicative problems use multiplication and division and include equal group, multiplicative comparison, rate, and proportion. Here is a great resource that explains each schema .   

Choose a problem-solving routine.  

The three key components of schema instruction are teaching:   

• The key features of each schema.  
• A solution strategy for each schema.  
• Important language and vocabulary related to the schema.  

MSBI provides additional support as needed for working memory, language, reading level, and numeracy skills so that students are engaged, motivated, and able to “show what they know” while problem solving.   

Problem-solving routines draw students’ attention to the decisions they need to make and actions they need to engage in to arrive at a solution. General attack strategies can be effective. These are two examples:   

UPS Check  

• Understand  
• Check work  
• Discover the problem type.  
• Identify information in the problem to represent in the diagram.  
• Solve the problem.  
• Check the answer.   

Students usually write these at the top of their paper or reference them on a poster or whiteboard in the classroom. Autistic students and those with more extensive support needs will likely need a more detailed and personalized routine that breaks down the mathematical decisions into more discrete behaviors.   

When developing routines to meet student needs, analyze the decisions that need to be made and behaviors involved in solving problems. Routines should always begin with reading the problem or requesting that a problem be read aloud. At least when students are initially learning the routine, they should have individual copies to follow, either printed directly on worksheets or as a separate visual support. Judiciously pair visual supports with text to give support but not so much that they are just relying on matching instead of demonstrating mathematical understanding. The general curriculum access lab at Florida State University has example problem-solving routines from research with students with autism and other developmental disabilities on their website.  

Support independence.

You must explicitly teach students to follow a problem-solving routine. Use think-alouds with clear and concise language while actively engaging students in the problem-solving process. Opportunities for guided practice are important for identifying points of strength and areas of misconception. A system of least prompts (starting with the prompt that provides the least amount of assistance) can be used when students are not independently correct:   

• A generic verbal prompt: Read/point to step of the problem-solving routine.   
• Direct verbal prompt: explain how to complete the step.   
• A model-retest: Model completing step and ask student to repeat.   

Self-monitoring and goal-setting can help facilitate independence in problem solving. Giving a space for students to check off steps as they are completed enables self-monitoring task completion to start as soon as they begin to solve the problem. The focus can shift to self-monitoring independence by having students check off steps completed “by myself” or “with help” as in the example below or self-monitoring duration by timing themselves.  

Word problem solving is an important skill for all students, as it puts math concepts and procedures into a real-world context. In addition, self-determinatio n skills such as choice-making, self-monitoring, and goal-setting can be feasibly embedded to enhance effectiveness and efficiency. To prepare autistic students for independence in their futures, they need instruction focused on skills of the future, not the past.  

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Verbal Problem-Solving Difficulties in Autism Spectrum Disorders and Atypical Language Development

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) adopt less efficient strategies than typically developing (TD) peers on the Twenty Questions Task (TQT), a measure of verbal problem-solving skills. Although problems with the TQT are typically associated with executive dysfunction, they have also been reported in children who are deaf, suggesting a role for atypical language development. To test the contribution of language history to ASD problem solving, TQT performance was compared in children with high-functioning autism (HFA), children with Asperger syndrome (AS) and TD children. The HFA group used significantly less efficient strategies than both AS and TD children. No group differences were evident on tests of question understanding, planning or verbal fluency. Potential explanations for differences in verbal problem-solving skill are discussed with reference to the development of inner speech and use of visual strategies in ASD.

Young people with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are often reported to have difficulty with spontaneously generating plans and strategies to solve new problems [ Channon, Charman, Heap, Crawford, & Rios, 2001 ; Mackinlay, Charman, & Karmiloff-Smith, 2006 ; Minshew, Meyer, & Goldstein, 2002 ]. Compared with tasks with a fixed set of responses, children with ASD can struggle with more “open-ended” cognitive tasks where a range of strategies could be deployed to achieve a particular goal [ White, Burgess, & Hill, 2009 ]. Knowing more about why this occurs is important in both the lab and the real world, as it has implications for adaptive skills and independent living [ Kenworthy, Yerys, Anthony, & Wallace, 2008 ].

Problem Solving in People with ASD

A simple example of this is seen on the Twenty Questions Task (TQT), a verbal problem-solving 1 test based on the traditional guessing game [ Mosher & Hornsby, 1966 ]. In the TQT, the experimenter selects a target from a picture array of everyday objects, and the participant asks a series of questions to establish its identity. Typically, the questions will narrow down possibilities via a categorical hierarchy, such as “Is it living?”, “Is it an animal?” and so on. Compared with age and intelligence quotient (IQ)-matched typically developing (TD) peers, high-functioning children and adults with ASD take more guesses on the game and ask fewer category-based questions [ Minshew, Siegel, Goldstein, & Weldy, 1994 ]. Moreover, the grouping questions used by ASD participants are often too specific: for example, they may ask “Is it something you eat soup with?” when it may be more effective to first ask “Is it something you eat with?” or “Is it cutlery?” [ Alderson-Day & McGonigle-Chalmers, 2011 ].

Because many ASD individuals are able to identify basic categories when they are prompted to on other tasks [ Tager-Flusberg, 1985 ; Ungerer & Sigman, 1987 ], it has been suggested that this reflects a specific problem with “concept formation,” namely a difficulty in organizing a set of items into a new grouping heuristic when this needs to be done spontaneously [ Minshew et al., 2002 ]. But the TQT—and problem-solving more generally—also involves a range of other, complex demands that could be affecting ASD performance.

First, efficient problem solving relies on executive functions (EFs); that is, the set of skills required to retain and manipulate information “on-line” during goal-directed tasks, such as planning, flexibility, selective attention, inhibition and working memory [ Hill, 2004 ]. Two studies by Alderson-Day and colleagues studied the effects of these factors on TQT performance [ Alderson-Day, 2011 ; Alderson-Day & McGonigle-Chalmers, 2011 ]. The typical TQT includes an array of pictures that do not change throughout the task, meaning that participants have to remember their questions “on-line” as they play [ Mosher & Hornsby, 1966 ]. Alderson-Day and McGonigle-Chalmers [2011] tested what effect this has using a version of the TQT based on a Guess Who? board, where participants could knock down items as they searched. Compared with controls, a sample of high-functioning children with ASD had to ask more questions on average to reach the target when they were unable to physically eliminate items.

When items cannot be removed, participants not only have to remember questions, but they also have to selectively attend to relevant information in the visual array. To parse out these demands, a second study by Alderson-Day [2011] provided participants with a written reminder of their questions when knocking down items was prohibited. This eliminated the need for additional questions in the ASD group—even though the visual demands of the task had not changed—implying a problem with memory for questions rather than attention. In addition, the participants in Alderson-Day [2011] appeared to have difficulty with the planning demands of the TQT. Compared with controls, ASD participants could recognize good questions to ask in isolation but struggled to plan a series of questions in advance that would be likely to narrow down options. Thus, while the TQT may require some element of concept formation, problems with working memory and planning also appear to affect ASD problem solving in this case.

Effects of Language on Problem-Solving: The Comparison With Deafness

Another important factor to consider is the role of language skills, which is prompted by similarities in problem solving between ASD and deafness. In a study with deaf schoolchildren, Marschark and Everhart [1999] observed more guessing and less use of category questions in deaf participants compared with hearing participants, with similar problems being evident in a follow-up sample of deaf graduate students. Executive difficulties are sometimes evident in deaf children, usually presenting as problems with self-regulation and impulsivity [see Hauser, Lukomski, & Hillman, 2008 , for a review]. But rather than explain their data in terms of EF skills, Marschark and Everhart proposed that they are likely to reflect the atypical language development that many deaf children experience. Deafness per se is not associated with delays or deficits: if deaf children have early access to language, usually by having deaf parents or relatives who can sign, they tend to develop very good language and cognitive skills [ Mayberry, 2002 ]. However, over 90% of deaf children have hearing parents [ Mitchell & Karchmer, 2004 ], meaning that many will not encounter skilled users of signing until school age, and some may only be encouraged to use spoken language rather than sign. Accordingly, there can be a range of delays in language skills for deaf children [e.g. Blamey, 2003 ; Moeller, Tomblin, Yoshinaga-Itano, Connor, & Jerger, 2007 ], and it has been suggested that this has consequences for language-related cognitive skills, particularly those more dependent on knowledge of spoken English [ Marschark, 2006 ]. For instance, there is evidence of subtle differences in verbal reasoning, categorization and free recall in deaf adults when compared to hearing controls [ Farjardo, Arfé, Benedetti, & Altoé, 2008 ; Koh, Vernon, & Bailey, 1971 ; Marschark, Convertino, McEvoy, & Masteller, 2004 ; McEvoy, Marschark, & Nelson, 1999 ; Ormel et al., 2010 ; Yi et al., 2011 ].

Given the presence of early communication difficulties in ASD [ Boucher, 2012 ], it could be that similar factors affect verbal problem solving in autism. One way to test this is to compare TQT performance in young people with high-functioning autism (HFA) and Asperger syndrome (AS). In contrast to HFA, AS has typically been associated with the presence of intact structural language skills in the first 3 years of life [ American Psychiatric Association, 1994 ; World Health Organization, 1993 ]. In most other respects, however, HFA and AS are considered to be alike [as indicated by the removal of AS as a separate diagnosis in DSM 5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013 ]. While some early studies reported greater EF skills and stronger verbal than nonverbal skills in AS compared with HFA [e.g. Szatmari, Archer, Fisman, Streiner, & Wilson, 1995 ], studies that have controlled for IQ generally find very few cognitive differences at all between the two groups, including similar performance on many EF tasks [ Manjiviona & Prior, 1999 ; Mayes & Calhoun, 2004 ; Ozonoff, South, & Miller, 2000 ]. No studies, however, have compared verbal problem-solving skills of this kind between autism and AS.

If early language skills affect verbal problem solving in ASD, then children with AS should show intact verbal problem-solving skills compared with children with autism. The main aim of the present study was to test this by comparing children with HFA, AS and typical development in their TQT performance. The first hypothesis was that HFA but not AS participants would show impaired performance on the task compared with TD children.

Explaining Differences in Problem-Solving Performance

The second aim of the study was to explain why such a difference might exist by ruling out confounds and identifying potential markers of early language skills. Poor problem-solving performance could just result from problems with question understanding, planning ahead and coming up with new questions on the spot; none of which are necessarily indicative of early language skills [AS participants, for instance, in some cases show an advantage over HFA participants on tests of word fluency; Spek, Schatorje, Scholte, & van Berckelaer-Onnes, 2009 ]. To rule out such differences, three tasks were deployed: a question discrimination (QD) task and a plan construction (PC) task from Alderson-Day [2011] , and a verbal fluency measure. Following prior evidence of generally similar executive and language skills in HFA and AS, we hypothesized that there would be no difference between the two ASD groups on these measures.

For early language skills to have an effect on later problem solving, they would plausibly need to shape how different strategies are internally considered and selected. For instance, early language delays could disrupt the development of inner speech, interfering with self-regulation and verbal deliberation [ Diaz & Berk, 1992 ]. Alternatively, delays in language could lead to visually mediated cognitive strategies taking precedence over verbally mediated ones [ Soulieres et al., 2009 ]. Arguably the most plausible route, though, is via semantic memory. Delays to early communication could disrupt the learning of new semantic groupings and the development of typical associations between exemplars and categories [ Horton & Markman, 1980 ; Marschark et al., 2004 ]. To test this, a novel semantic decision task (SDT) was included in the testing battery. It was hypothesized that HFA but not AS participants would show atypical semantic decision skills and that this would be associated with group differences in problem solving.

Finally, a questionnaire measure of language milestones was deployed as an exploratory tool to assess possible links between language history and task performance. If semantic skills were not observed to explain problem-solving performance, then language milestones could still indicate the presence of an unspecified effect of language delay.

Participants

Fifteen children with AS (14 m; ages 9–16) and 15 children with HFA (14 m: ages 9–18) were recruited from the local area via parent groups and a local autism charity. Participants possessed a diagnosis of either autism or AS in accordance with ICD-10 research diagnostic criteria [ World Health Organization, 1993 ]. All ASD participants were originally diagnosed via contact with local clinical services, where diagnoses are made based on agreement by a multidisciplinary panel and use of the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule [ Lord et al., 2000 ] and Autism Diagnostic Interview—Revised [ADI-R: Lord, Rutter, & Couteur, 1994 ]. Five participants had also had their diagnosis confirmed within the past 3 years by a trained researcher using the ADI-R. Exclusion criteria included the presence of any other neurological conditions, specific language impairments (SLIs) or reading difficulties. 2 Fifteen TD children (10 m; ages 9–18) were recruited from a participant database to provide a neurotypical comparison group. All recruitment and study procedures were approved by the University of Edinburgh research ethics committee.

Cognitive abilities were estimated using the vocabulary, similarities and matrix reasoning subtests of the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale for Intelligence [WASI: Wechsler, 1999 ], providing scores for full-scale IQ (vocabulary and matrix reasoning) and verbal IQ (vocabulary and similarities). Pairwise t -tests indicated that the three groups did not significantly differ in IQ, although trends were observed for mean differences in VIQ ( P = 0.089) and, to a lesser extent, FSIQ ( P = 0.098) between HFA and TD participants specifically. While HFA and TD participants were age matched, the HFA group was significantly older than the group of AS participants (HFA > AS, t (28) = 2.157, P = 0.040) 3 ( Table 1 ).

Age and IQ Scores for ASD and TD Participants

AS, Asperger syndrome; HFA, high-functioning autism; n.s., not significant; SD, standard deviation; TD, typically developing.

Materials and Procedure

The first task attempted was the TQT. The task was presented on a board containing pictures of 24 everyday items, displayed in hinged frames (allowing for participants to eliminate items after each question). Participants completed three trials of Twenty Questions: the first two trials allowed item elimination during search by knocking down pictures that were no longer needed. On the last trial, elimination was prohibited, increasing the memory demands of the task. Alongside the game board, a 15” laptop was used to provide a “random selector” animation and audiovisual feedback during the game [for a full explanation of the TQT procedure, see Alderson-Day, 2011 ].

The primary outcome for the TQT was question quality (QQ), defined as the minimum proportion of items eliminated per question. For example, in a set of 10 items including five animals, “Is it an animal?” would eliminate at least half of the items irrespective of the answer, providing a score of 0.5. A direct guess (“Is it the dog?”) would only be guaranteed to eliminate one item out of 10, scoring 0.1. For comparison with previous studies, the number of questions used per trial and percentages of grouping questions and guesses were also recorded.

Following the TQT, participants attempted the QD and PC tasks from Alderson-Day [2011] . For QD, participants were presented with 10 hypothetical scenarios from Twenty Questions and asked to select which of two questions would be the best to ask first in each scenario. Five 12-item scenarios and five 24-item scenarios were presented using a stimulus book. The task was scored for the number of correct answers out of 10.

For PC, participants were presented with an array of 32 possible questions and asked to select five questions that would be useful to use “if we were to play the game again in a moment.” Once five questions were selected, participants were asked to order them in terms of which question they would ask first, second and so on. Responses were scored based on the mean QQ for the five questions selected, assuming a 24-item TQT set. For example, a sequence asking about living things, animals and pets would be guaranteed to eliminate 12, 6 and 3 items on average from the set, and would be allocated scores of 0.5, 0.25 and 0.125. Greater scores indicate greater efficiency of plans.

Verbal fluency

To assess verbal fluency abilities, the letter and semantic fluency subtests from the Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination—Revised [ACE-R; Mioshi, et al., 2006 ] were administered. Raw scores for letter fluency (words beginning with “P”) and semantic fluency (animals) were used.

The SDT was based on semantic association measures used by Gaffrey et al. [2007] and Marschark et al. [2004] , and presented on a laptop using E-Prime [ Schneider, Eschman, & Zuccolotto, 2002 ]. Participants viewed a target word (e.g. ANIMAL) and were then asked to judge whether a series of cue words was associated with the target (e.g. DOG, HAMMER, HORSE). In the category condition, the target word was a superordinate category term (such as ANIMAL or TOOL), and the cue words were all basic exemplars, only some of which belonged to the target category. In the exemplar condition, a basic exemplar was the target (e.g. DOG), and the cue words were all superordinate category terms (e.g. ANIMAL, PET, FRUIT). Participants completed three blocks of 10 trials in each condition. Each trial consisted of a target word (2-sec presentation), a 500-msec interval and a cue word, which would remain on screen until the participant responded. Responses were followed by a feedback page (showing “Correct!” or “Incorrect”). Based on prior evidence of intact category identification in ASD [ Minshew et al., 2002 ], the reaction times for accurate responses (indicating semantic association) were used as the primary outcome of the task. In addition, accuracy scores were collected for each condition. 4

Language questionnaire

Parents were asked to indicate (a) age of first word, (b) age of first phrase of two or more words and (c) language ratings at age 3, 5, 7 and current age in relation to other children of the same age. Ratings were made on a Likert scale ranging from 1 (“Much worse than other children of the same age”) to 5 (“Much better than other children”). Items (a) and (b) were chosen based on their standard use in the ADI-R [ Lord et al., 1994 ]. Language ratings beyond age 3 were included to reflect the possibility of later language abilities also having important predictive value [see, e.g. Bennett et al., 2008 ].

Unless otherwise stated, analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to compare the three groups on the main task outcomes. Covariate analysis, using age and VIQ as covariates, was used to account for potential influences of age and general ability. VIQ but not full-scale IQ was included as a covariate because of (a) strong collinearity between scores for both and (b) the greater relevance of VIQ to verbal problem solving. Where dependent variables were nonnormal, nonparametric tests were used (specifically, Kruskal–Wallis tests with Mann–Whitney post-hoc tests when assessing group differences and Spearman’s Rho for correlational analysis).

ANCOVA was first of all applied to performance on the TQT to test the hypothesis that HFA but not AS participants would be less efficient than TD participants in their problem solving. Second, ANCOVAs and Kruskall–Wallis tests were used to assess group differences in QD, planning, fluency and semantic decision. To test their effect on problem solving, they were then also included as covariates in a reanalysis of TQT performance. Finally, correlation and hierarchical regression analyses were used to test for potential predictors of problem-solving performance across all three groups combined.

P -values were not corrected across different tasks because there were deemed to be testing separate questions (namely do the groups differ in problem solving, is that because of clear confounds in other relevant skills, and is it because of a difference in semantic abilities?). Within each task, post hoc comparisons were made using P -values Bonferroni-corrected for the number of pairwise tests between groups.

Comparing Problem-Solving Skills

Table 2 displays the main task outcomes for the TQT. To test overall problem-solving efficiency, an ANCOVA was run comparing mean QQ scores in the three groups. This indicated a main effect of group ( F (2, 40) = 5.303, P = 0.009, eta p 2 = 0.210), alongside covariate effects of VIQ ( F (1, 40) = 4.092, P = 0.001, eta p 2 = 0.244) and age ( F (1, 40) = 5.262, P = 0.027, eta p 2 = 0.116). As hypothesized, pairwise comparisons indicated that HFA participants’ questions were significantly less efficient than those of AS participants ( P = 0.016) and TD participants ( P = 0.029). No difference was observed between AS and TD participants ( P = 1.0).

Mean Task Scores in AS, HFA and TD Participants

AS, Asperger syndrome; HFA, high-functioning autism; n.s., not significant; QQ, question quality; SD, standard deviation; TD, typically developing.

For the secondary outcomes of the TQT, similar group differences were evident for the number of questions on each trial (group main effect: F (2, 40) = 4.056, P = 0.025, eta p 2 = 0.169), although only the HFA vs. TD contrast was significant ( P = 0.032). Use of grouping was high in all groups (60–65%), and on average guesses were used twice as much by ASD participants, but Kruskal–Wallis ANOVAs (used because of skew in the rates of grouping and guessing) indicated no significant group differences (all P > 0.400). A mixed ANCOVA was also used to check for any changes in efficiency across the three task trials. Despite the switch from allowing (trials 1 and 2) to prohibiting elimination (trial 3), no significant trial effects or interactions were evident for QQ (all P > 0.05, all eta p 2 < 0.1), suggesting that overall group differences on these variables were consistent across trials.

Explanations of Problem-Solving Differences

ANCOVA indicated no significant Group effect or any covariate effects on QD (all P > 0.05, all eta p 2 < 0.06). For PC, plan efficiency was significantly influenced by VIQ ( F (1, 40) = 6.658, P = 0.014, eta p 2 = 0.164), but no effects of group or age were observed (all P > 0.05, all eta p 2 < 0.06).

All verbal fluency scores were nonnormal, necessitating the use of nonparametric tests. Kruskal–Wallis tests indicated a trend on letter fluency score ( X 2 (2) = 5.175, N = 45, P = 0.075) and a significant difference on semantic fluency score ( X 2 (2) = 6.33, N = 45, P = 0.042) between the groups. In general, performance was best in TD participants and worst in AS participants (see Table 2 ), but no pairwise differences survived correction for multiple comparisons. To test for potential effects of fluency performance on problem solving, letter and semantic fluency scores were then added separately as covariates to ANCOVAs of TQT QQ. Neither significantly contributed to TQT performance, and all original main effects remained the same (all P > 0.600, all eta p 2 < 0.02).

A 3 × 2 (group × condition) mixed ANCOVA was used to compare reaction times in each group on the SDT. Significant contributions of age ( F (1, 40) = 10.774, P = 0.002, eta p 2 = 0.212) and VIQ ( F (1, 40) = 5.388, P = 0.025, eta p 2 = 0.119) were observed, but no significant effect of group. Nominally, mean reaction times were slower for exemplar-to-category associations than the reverse (see Table 2 ), but no significant difference was observed between the two conditions ( P = 0.154, eta p 2 = 0.050) nor any group × condition interactions.

Accuracy scores for the same task were nonnormally distributed. Kruskal–Wallis tests indicated no significant differences in accuracy on the exemplar condition ( X 2 (2) = 4.295, N = 45, P = 0.117), but a significant contrast for the category condition ( X 2 (2) = 8.462, N = 45, P = 0.012). Mann–Whitney U -tests indicated that AS participants were less accurate than TD participants ( U = 49.50, N = 30, P = 0.042) in their identification of exemplars when provided with a superordinate category (e.g. Does it go with TOOL?). No other pairwise comparisons reached significance (all P > 0.05).

When SDT outcomes were included as covariates in the TQT analysis, no significant covariate effects were observed (all P > 0.300, all eta p 2 < 0.03), suggesting that they could not explain group differences in problem-solving efficiency.

Early language ratings

Language milestones and parent ratings are displayed in Table 3 . Spearman’s correlations were used to assess the validity of language ratings for ages 3 and up, showing moderate correlations with full-scale ( r = 0.26–0.29) and verbal IQ ( r = 0.19–0.30). A hierarchical regression analysis was used to explore potential predictors of problem-solving performance, using mean QQ as the dependent variable. Block 1 included age and gender (as control variables), block 2 added ages of first word and first phrase, and block 3 added language ratings for 3, 5, 7 and current age. The only individual predictor to reach significance in any model was age of first phrase (stan. beta = −0.532, P = 0.029), and while block 2 showed a significant R 2 change over block 1 ( ΔR 2 = 0.145, F (2,44) = 3.492, P = 0.043), none of the resulting models significantly predicted mean QQ (all P > 0.110).

Early Language Milestones and Parent Ratings

AS, Asperger syndrome; HFA, high-functioning autism; SD, standard deviation; TD, typically developing.

The main finding of the study was that HFA participants, but not AS participants, adopted less efficient strategies than TD children during verbal problem solving. As was hypothesized, HFA participants asked questions that eliminated fewer items each time, whereas AS participants performed at a similar level to TD children. This suggests that atypical language development may be important to explaining inefficiencies in the task performance of ASD participants and that prior evidence of problems on the TQT in ASD samples [ Alderson-Day & McGonigle-Chalmers, 2011 ; Minshew et al., 1994 , 2002 ] may only apply to those with experience of language delay. There was also tentative evidence to suggest that age of first phrase acquisition was related to problem-solving performance, although in general early language milestones and ratings from parents did not significantly predict success on the TQT.

Alongside this, AS and HFA participants displayed a very similar profile on a range of other measures. No differences between ASD participants were observed in question understanding, planning and verbal fluency, in support of the hypothesis that such skills would not explain group differences in problem solving. This is consistent with prior reports of comparable EF and fluency skills in autism and AS [ Manjiviona & Prior, 1999 ; Miller & Ozonoff, 2000 ; Verté, Geurts, Roeyers, Oosterlaan, & Sergeant, 2006 ; cf. Spek et al., 2009 ]. It may have been expected that AS participants would be generally be more fluent than HFA participants and thus able to generate questions on the task, but the direction of results indicated the opposite. Furthermore, performance on the task was unrelated to problem-solving efficiency on the TQT.

These results add to the prior findings of Alderson-Day [2011] and Alderson-Day and McGonigle-Chalmers [2011] by suggesting that verbal problem solving might be a specific problem for HFA children, rather than ASD as a whole. Moreover, while those studies identified specific executive demands posed by the TQT, the present study suggests that language background may be more important to understanding why children with ASD struggle to use the most effective questions.

The final hypothesis—that differences on the TQT would map on to underlying differences in semantic skill—was not supported: performance on a SDT was unrelated to success on the TQT. Contrary to predictions, AS rather than HFA participants showed the most atypical performance on this task, scoring lowest for the identification of exemplars for specific superordinate categories. This is consistent with prior evidence of atypical semantic skills in AS compared with TD children ( Kamio et al., 2007 ) but hard to explain in relation to HFA participants. Very few studies have directly compared categorization or other related lexico-semantic skills in AS and HFA, and those that have usually find HFA to be more atypical in profile than AS [e.g. Speirs, Yelland, Rinehart, & Tonge, 2011 ]. In any case, there is little evidence here to suggest that semantic skills provide the link between language history and later problem solving for children with HFA.

One process that could be implicated instead is inner speech (also known as silent speech or internal monologue). Inner speech is often argued to be developmental in origin and has been historically associated with problem solving and self-regulation [ Vygotsky, 1987 ]. Problems with early communicative interaction would in theory impact upon inner speech and its developmental precursor, private speech [ Fernyhough, 1996 ]. Intriguingly, use of private speech appears to be intact in children with ASD and can even enhance their performance on cognitive tasks relative to when they are silent [ Winsler, Abar, Feder, Schunn, & Rubio, 2007 ]. However, a range of studies have indicated that inner speech is less likely to be utilized by people with ASD [ Holland & Low, 2010 ; Wallace, Silvers, Martin, & Kenworthy, 2009 ; Whitehouse, Maybery, & Durkin, 2006 ], and this seems to be particularly the case for more complex planning and problem-solving tasks [ Williams, Bowler, & Jarrold, 2012 ]. If the development and internalization of inner speech was more likely to be disrupted in HFA compared with AS, then this could have long-term consequences for activities like verbal problem solving.

Such an explanation is speculative, but it has specific implications that are testable. One prediction is that there would be differences in inner speech use within the autism spectrum according to language history, at its simplest varying as a function of language delay, or varying with the degree of early communicative impairment in some other way. Another implication is that we should expect similar problem-solving profiles in other children with a history of language difficulties, such as those with a SLI. There is initial evidence to suggest that children with SLI show intact use of inner speech but less internalized use of private speech during planning tasks, implying a delayed development of verbal strategy skills [ Lidstone, Meins, & Fernyhough, 2012 ]. It may be that similar delays in the internalization of self-directed language skills affects ASD as well: a question for future research would be to examine how the relative proportions of private and inner speech use vary for ASD children in relation to their degree of language delay.

Another possibility, not mutually exclusive to the first, is that participants with HFA were more likely than AS or TD participants to adopt other, nonverbal strategies in their approach to the TQT. Anecdotally, there are many accounts of people with ASD preferring to “think in pictures” rather than speech [ Grandin, 1995 ; Kunda & Goel, 2011 ]. Direct experimental comparisons are few, but there is some evidence to suggest HFA but not AS participants respond faster to visuospatial rather than verbal matrix reasoning puzzles [ Sahyoun, Soulières, Belliveau, Mottron, & Mody, 2009 ]. If this were to explain differences in problem-solving skill, the implication would be that ASD individuals with language delay would be more likely to adopt visual strategies than those with more typical language development. As the TQT involves a visual array, visualizing potential groupings or basing questions on concrete and perceptual similarities represent possible ways of attempting the task, but also ones that may not identify the most abstract categories for questioning (such as organic vs. nonorganic entities). Dependence on visual or verbal strategies could be investigated by manipulating levels of perceptual similarity and abstractness in the test materials [for a preliminary example, see Alderson-Day & McGonigle-Chalmers, 2011 ].

It is of course possible that AS and HFA participants were differing in other ways on the task. Given its visual presentation, it could be that HFA participants were narrowly focusing on small groupings at the expense of more global categories, as would be typical of a “local-biased” processing style [ Happé & Frith, 2006 ]. However, signs of local bias are generally evident across the autistic spectrum [e.g. Jolliffe & Baron-Cohen, 1997 ]. It is also not clear why, developmentally, the two groups would be more likely to differ in this regard, but not differ in other ways more closely related to language.

Before discussing the practical implications of these findings, some caveats must be acknowledged. First, the sample size tested here is small, and it was not possible to closely match the participant groups in age and IQ abilities. The analytic method used here to compensate for this (ANCOVA) adjusts for the effects of age and IQ, but it should not be interpreted as fully “controlling” for their influence [ Miller & Chapman, 2001 ]. This is perhaps less of a concern regarding age, as HFA participants were significantly older than AS participants and yet still performed worse on the TQT. That being said, the relatively wide age range may have also obscured important differences in ability, given that executive skills and overall problem-solving competence can change considerably for ASD participants in adolescence [ Van den Bergh, Scheeren, Begeer, Koot, & Geurts, 2014 ]. The inequivalence of the groups is more important regarding VIQ, as theoretically this could have driven group differences in performance despite the statistical correction of using ANCOVA. In mitigation, it is worth noting that group differences between HFA and TD participants have previously been observed in samples closely matched for IQ [ Alderson-Day, 2011 ; Minshew et al., 1994 ] and that HFA participants in the present study performed comparably on almost every other task. Nevertheless, these findings need to be replicated in a larger, more closely matched sample before the potential contributions of age and IQ to group differences in problem solving can be clearly ruled out.

Second, the study did not include a standardized measure of language skills, such as the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (CELF) test [ Semel, Wiig, & Secord, 1995 ]. To allow for other experimental tasks to be used in the time allowed, it was not possible to deploy an in-depth language battery in this instance: a larger study with an existing database of ASD participants should be able to achieve this. However, while a standardized language measure was not deployed here, the tasks used covered a range of relevant skills, including lexical knowledge (WASI vocabulary), category knowledge (SDT) and word fluency (ACE-R letter and semantic fluency). Thus, a number of language-dependent skills were accounted for, even if a standardized battery was absent.

Finally, the use of parent’s retrospective reports of early language abilities—which may have occurred over 10 years ago—at best only offer a rough proxy for language skills at the time, and without additional data it is unknown how reliable those ratings truly are. The data provided by families generally fitted existing diagnoses, but only longitudinal data could fully demonstrate relationships between early language and later cognitive skills. Such data would also be important in assessing how problem-solving abilities may change with language skills over time for people with ASD.

Notwithstanding those limitations, the study has a range of potential implications for methods and practice. First, if the TQT and other measures of verbal problem-solving are used with ASD groups [as it is in the Delis Kaplan Executive Function System; Delis, Kaplan, & Kramer, 2001 ], then task performance needs to be considered in the context of current and past language skills. The TQT is not a simple measure of problem solving or concept formation: it is a complex task with considerable executive and linguistic demands. Other cognitive tasks where the most effective strategies are language dependent, and the executive load is high—such as certain types of free recall or counterfactual reasoning—are also likely to create similar problems for HFA individuals.

Second, although the recent changes to diagnostic criteria have eliminated the diagnosis of Asperger disorder [ American Psychiatric Association, 2013 ], these data act as a reminder that variation in language skills and development across the spectrum are important and can impact upon cognition in subtle ways for people with ASD, even if the large majority of cognitive outcomes appear similar. This is likely to be particularly important in educational contexts for understanding what kinds of strategies are going to be most useful for facilitating verbal problem-solving skills in ASD individuals. In social problem-solving training [ Solomon, Goodlin-Jones, & Anders, 2004 ], for example, young people with HFA who have good structural language skills but a history of language delay may still need considerable support for use of new verbal strategies. Alternatively, they may be more likely to benefit from use of visual materials such as decision trees, Venn diagrams or other graphical techniques that can be used to support decision making [ Davies, Stock, & Wehmeyer, 2003 ; Dexter & Hughes, 2011 ]. AS individuals, in contrast, may be better placed to handle the language demands of such training, while still struggling with the social-cognitive aspects of its core content.

Any problem-solving task presents a range of complex demands: verbal problem solving often requires generating linguistic strategies and applying them flexibly to a new situation. The results presented here suggest that even a simple, game-based example of problem solving could be affected by an individual’s developmental background. A replication of this result, with more closely matched groups and a wider age range, would test this more idea more comprehensively. Understanding how language development can selectively affect performance in a range of problem-solving contexts is crucial to developing better educational tools and better support for people with an ASD.

Acknowledgments

This research was completed as part of a doctoral degree by the author at the University of Edinburgh and supported by a University of Edinburgh College of Humanities and Social Sciences Studentship. Margaret McGonigle-Chalmers and Robert Logie are thanked for their help and support for the research. Thanks are also due to Charles Fernyhough for comments on the manuscript. The author declares no conflicts of interest.

The author is currently supported by Wellcome Trust grant WT098455.

1 “Problem solving” is a term that has been applied to a wide range of tasks that can sometimes vary considerably [c.f. Rumsey, 1985 ; Soulieres et al., 2009 ]. Broadly, it is used to refer to tasks or puzzles where the solution is not made apparent in the task materials. More specifically, problem-solving tasks often require (a) the generation of a strategy to achieve success and (b) working through a series of moves or steps towards a solution [ Newell & Simon, 1972 ].

2 One HFA participant had also previously received a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Because of the high comorbidity of ASD and ADHD [ Leyfer et al., 2006 ], this participant was not excluded, but the data weremarked for later analysis in case of potential outliers in performance. However, all of the participant’s data fell well within range for their group.

3 Parents were also asked to complete a version of the Autism Quotient [AQ-Adolescent; Baron-Cohen, Hoekstra, Knickmeyer, & Wheelwright, 2006 ] about their child as a further means of matching the groups. Questionnaires were available for all but one HFA participant. Both HFA and ASD participants scored higher than TD participants ( P < 0.05). No difference was observed between the ASD groups ( P = 0.596).

4 Participants also initially completed a practice round of identifying four-, six- and eight-letter words without a semantic decision component, but that is not reported here.

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Autistic traits linked to creative problem-solving

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