The ability to find shoes in the bedroom, apples in a supermarket, or a favourite animal at the zoo is impaired among children with autism, according to new research led by Dr Liz Pellicano, from The University of Western Australia's School of Psychology and London's Institute of Education.

While autistic children generally outperform others in small-scale visual search tasks, this study of 20 autistic children revealed that they were much less efficient in large-scale searching.

The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on December 20, 2010.

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Dr Liz Pellicano
Janine MacDonald (UWA Public Affairs)  (+61 8)  6488 5563  /  (+61 4) 32 637 71