The application of drawing tasks in studying cognitive functions in autism: a systematic review

Abstract

Objective: Cognitive atypicalities are prevalent in autism. This prevalence has exhorted researchers to look for developing the most appropriate evaluation tools, which enable them to study cognitive functions in autism accurately and efficiently. Drawing tasks, due to their numerous advantages, are known as promising tools for examining cognitive functions. Therefore, the aim of this study was to systematically review the characteristics of the drawing tasks used for studying cognitive functions in autism.

Method: Using PRISMA guidelines, we identified relevant articles via systematic electronic literature search up to March 2022.

Results: A total of 50 articles were eligible to be included in this review. Among this literature, drawing tasks have been mainly used to investigate perceptual functions, social cognition, and imagination in individuals with autism. Executive functions, memory and creativity were also examined by using drawing tasks in a few studies.

Conclusion: We discussed the potential of drawing tasks in the assessment of cognitive functions in autism. Moreover, we reviewed how drawing tasks could be improved for application in individuals with autism.

Keywords:

• autism
• cognitive function
• drawing tasks
• neurodiverse population
• systematic review

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Thematic drawing has been called free drawing in some articles. However, we avoid using this terminology, because in most of drawing literature, free drawing is applied for situations in which individuals are given the opportunity to choose the drawing topic.

2 We categorized all phases of the ROCF test as a copying task