Cognition:
- Learning to think about things, people, and events in abstract ways may be a struggle.
- Manipulating ideas in order to organize, prioritize and sequence thoughts and actions may be slow to develop.
- Connecting the details to see the "big picture" may be a difficult task.
- Learning to organize, priortize and sequence information may be difficult.
- Information processing, prediction of consequences of an action, temporal concepts, and executive function may be slow to develop.
- Central coherence may be weak with poor perception of context along with the details.
- Executive function that involves planning, organization, flexibility and monitoring may be delayed.
- Planning the steps to complete a task may be difficult.
- Using working memory to recall the steps needed to complete a task may be a struggle.
- The ability to shift thinking from one activity to another may be poor.
- Impulse control in order to stay focused on the current activity may be limited.
- A person may need to do one thing at a time.
- A person may see things in concrete terms with no gray areas.
- A person may have significant abilities in music or math.
- A person may have considerable skill in remembering details such as names, facts, or trivial information.
- The ability to manipulate ideas for problem solving may be difficult.
- There may be superficial depth of knowledge on a specific topic.
- A person may be slow to process information.
- It may be a struggle to connect ideas causing difficulty with temporal concepts, sequencing of events, and scenarios/narratives.
- The ability to engage in pretense, humor and inference may be limited.
- Cognition is related in various ways to other features of autism. Please see the Social Interaction Feature, the Perspective Feature, and the Reading Feature in this web site.
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