Home » Health & Wellness » Autistic Behaviour » 'Gestalt Perception' in Autism: Superability or Deficit? - Page 3

'Gestalt Perception' in Autism: Superability or Deficit? - Page 3

© Olga Bogdashina

On the conceptual level, gestalt perception leads to rigidity of thinking and lack of generalization. They can perform in the exactly same situation with the exactly same prompts but fail to apply the skill if anything in the environment, routine, prompt, etc. has been even slightly changed. For instance, the child can perform the task if he is being touched on the shoulder and fails if has not been given the prompt. These children need sameness and predictability to feel safe in their environment. If something is not the same, it changes the whole gestalt of the situation, and they do not know what they are expected to do. It brings confusion, frustration and anxiety.

What can we do to help them 'sort out' sensory information?

• We should find out which modality does not filter information and make the environment 'visually/auditorily,' etc. simple. The next step would be to teach the person to 'break the visual/auditory, etc. picture' into meaningful units.
• It is important to always communicate to the child beforehand, in a way he can understand (i.e. using verbal, visual, tactile, etc. means) what and why will be changed. Changes should be gradual, with his active participation.

Here arises the question: Does the explanation of 'gestalt perception' contradict the 'weak central coherence theory' (Frith, 1989) in autism? No, it does not. The theory of weak central coherence 'starts working' at the next stage of the process of perception when gestalt perception inevitably leads to distortions and fragmentation, in order to limit the amount of information to be processed. (To be discussed in the next article.)

References

Frith, U. (1989). Autism: Explaining the Enigma. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Grandin, T. (1996). Thinking in Pictures. Vintage Books.

Williams, D. (1996). Autism: An Inside-Out Approach. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

The copyright of the article 'Gestalt Perception' in Autism: Superability or Deficit? - Page 3 in Autistic Behaviour is owned by . Permission to republish 'Gestalt Perception' in Autism: Superability or Deficit? - Page 3 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.