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Characteristics of Thinking and Imagination


choose subjects for in-depth research (pre-experimental screening, and when conducting the experiment I chose 3-4 year old children).

- Use the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) to diagnose Autism.

- Use the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) to determine the level of Autism.

- Use the Small Steps Developmental Skills Checklist Book 8 to assess your child's actual development in each area.

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1.3.4 Characteristics of Autistic Children

1.3.4.1 Body shape characteristics

Characteristics of Thinking and Imagination

ASDs have the same appearance as normal children, and no published studies have mentioned any abnormalities in the physical appearance of ASDs. According to Kanner's description, ASDs generally have a more handsome appearance than normal children, and ASDs basically do not have anatomical abnormalities in their internal organs. However, research by the University of Missouri (USA) through 3D imaging of typical ASDs shows that: ASDs have a wider upper face and larger eyes, a shorter mid-face (including cheeks and nose), and a wider mouth and philtrum [114].

1.3.4.2 Sensory characteristics

The sensory threshold of autism is not normal. Some children have sub-threshold sensation (hitting, pinching, banging their head against the wall without feeling pain; rubbing the skin without feeling a rash), some children have over-threshold sensation (don't want anyone to touch their body, touching their skin makes them shiver, don't dare to walk barefoot or on prickly carpets). Some children are too sensitive to stimulation and can react strongly to textures, loud sounds, or strange tastes and smells... Therefore, in autism therapy, people also pay much attention to sensory therapy, also known as sensory regulation [95].

1.3.4.3 Characteristics of thinking and imagination

ASD also has certain difficulties in imagination. According to Vo Nguyen Tinh Van (2006), ASD has some cognitive problems such as: children do not recognize


Children with autism have difficulty in playing, pretending, imagining, and role-playing, and have difficulty performing roles in imaginary games [63]. Children with autism have difficulty perceiving the meaning of experienced events or have little ability to "learn from experience ", so their learning ability is very difficult; most children have a fairly good "parrot" memory and superior spatial perception without relying on reasoning and reasoning abilities. In daily life, children have difficulty combining information from recalled events and from current events, and are unable to understand the meaning of experiences to predict what will happen and predict implementation plans. According to the assessment of most researchers on autism, the memory of autistic children is very good and profound, but the connection between memories in memory is very fragmented and unstable. Therefore, it is difficult for children to fully understand the meaning of what is in their memory, and it is difficult to summarize and generalize to draw conclusions and draw lessons.

1.3.4.4 Behavioral characteristics

+ Disturbing behavior in public places. ASD has behaviors that disturb people around them. Children pay little attention to social norms, want to follow their personal preferences and thoughts, so they easily have behaviors that go against the expectations of others, such as: crying when adults do not satisfy their preferences, knocking over a pile of things when entering a supermarket, quickly grabbing coins from the hands of employees, taking things from other people's bookshelves, quickly snatching a toy from the hands of the child next to them... doing so without feeling embarrassed or ashamed. ASD's disruptive behavior in public places shows that the child is not integrated into the community, which is related to the child's ability to behave socially.

+ Screaming, angry. ASD has strange interests and habits that are not in accordance with common social norms. Adults often see this and stop these unusual interests and habits. At that time, children are very uncomfortable and have angry and aggressive behaviors. At the same time, because children have difficulty with language and cannot express their thoughts, adults do not understand them and do not follow their wishes.


Children. For example, children love to play with mobile phones. When they see someone with a phone, they just want to grab it to play with. Adults stop them from screaming and getting angry.

+ Stereotyped behavior. According to Kanner, stereotypic behavior is a typical manifestation of autism, children have stereotyped, repetitive behaviors; like to walk back and forth in the room, like to arrange objects in straight lines; Twist, turn, rotate fingers and hands; Say a few words over and over out of context; Like to go to familiar places; Like to run around and spin; Like to spin objects; Like to play with toys that make noise; Like to turn on and off electrical or electronic buttons, sway forward and backward, bang their heads, hold an object tightly, turn on and off switches continuously, move toys from one hand to another continuously... Different children have different preferences for stereotyped, stereotypic behaviors [23, pp.7,8 ].

+ Dislikes change. ASD wants everything to be familiar and close, children hate change and disruption: from personal belongings, school supplies to daily living places. Some children are very disappointed when their habits are changed by someone. For example, during nap time at preschool, children love to sleep with a pillow, today the teacher took the pillow away, the child cried and could not sleep. For ASD, unfamiliarity means insecurity, children will feel insecure when there is a stranger, a strange object or a strange place. Therefore, warning children in advance to prepare mentally to accept new things is very important.

+ Abnormal attachments. At some stage, children with autism have unusual attachments to objects such as: Children spend too much time collecting newspapers, bottles, cans, calendars, strings, blades of grass, plastic bags; children like household objects such as bottles, bowls, pots, pans, forks but do not like normal toys at all. With these types of objects, children find in them a certain interesting meaning that adults do not know. However, children can play with these objects for many days, many months without getting bored. Children often only like a few specific activities such as spinning an object or arranging objects in a certain row.


Thus, children with autism have limited interests. This limitation of autism will affect the child's meticulousness, exploration, and understanding of the world around them.

+ Other unusual behaviors. ASDs can also develop a variety of symptoms, mental disorders appear including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), psychosis, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and other anxiety disorders. About 20% of ASDs have unusual seizures. Children with autism can also show disruptive behaviors. They may self-harm or attack others.

1.3.4.5 Attention characteristics

The attention of the TTK is poor, the attention is quickly dispersed. When performing a task, the child can only concentrate for a short time, the child has difficulty concentrating on details, is not sustainable, and is always distracted by external influences. The child has difficulty following the instructions given by adults, especially when participating in games of taking turns and rotating, the child has difficulty waiting patiently for his turn and has difficulty controlling his reactions. The child sees everything magnified, the TTK often focuses (sticks) on a feature of an object (object or person) and ignores the " big picture ". This poor concentration leaves a bad result when the child performs a task with poor results. On the contrary, for what the child likes, the child focuses very well. The child can sit for hours to assemble puzzle pieces, peel off stickers on products, play with toys lined up in long rows. In addition, children have behaviors that attract other people's attention or take other people's attention away from them through unusual actions such as crying, screaming, sulking, throwing tantrums, banging their heads against the wall, self-torture... to satisfy their selfishness so that people will meet their needs or pay attention to them.

1.3.4.6 Emotional characteristics

ASD has difficulty making friends with other children. It often takes them a long time to understand other people's feelings, express emotions, form attachments to individuals, or show interest in others. Threshold


The emotions of the TTK have unclear boundaries between sadness and happiness. The child's facial expressions are the same when sad and happy.

1.3.4.7 Social interaction characteristics.

The ability to interact socially with ASD is very poor. This greatly reduces the child's ability to communicate because the social environment is an important environment for developing communication skills, making it difficult to integrate with friends when going to school. Children hate and do not like to follow other people's wishes and often strongly oppose. Children always want all their wishes to be met immediately, whatever they want they get. Therefore, the child's interaction is only a request, not to express emotions or share experiences.

1.3.4.8 Intellectual characteristics

The intellectual characteristics of ASD are very diverse. Some ASDs come with childhood disintegrative syndrome, severe autism with developmental regression. This disorder is characterized by late onset (from 2 to 10 years old) and has symptoms such as: slow language development, poor social function, bowel and bladder control, poor motor skills. The child's intellectual development index is very low, the regression in the child occurs very suddenly, the child's development is developing very well and then disappears, even knowing nothing. Some other ASDs are very intelligent, also known as high-functioning autism (Aperger syndrome), the child has the ability to draw beautifully, play the piano well or has an excellent memory, a very high intellectual development index but has some difficulties: poor eye contact, poor social interaction, lack of emotional exchange; some children have repetitive, stereotyped movements [16, p.10 ]. If autism is detected early and intervened early, it is possible for the child to develop intellectually, acquire language, learn cultural knowledge, and integrate with people in the community.

1.3.4.9 Communication characteristics

* Limitations on the relationship level

Children have a lot of impairment in interacting with people, most of them show isolation, like to play alone, avoid communicating with friends. Most parents of children with autism think that in the first year, their children are very obedient, quiet, like to play alone,


does not like to make eye contact, does not show signs of spreading arms when someone wants to pick him up, does not know how to point his index finger and look in the direction of the other person's pointing finger, is not afraid of strangers and is not friendly with caregivers, does not know how to smile at 3 months, does not know how to cry or show fear at 8 months, does not respond when called by name, avoids eye contact but can stare at a point that the child likes, has poor ability to bond with relatives but does not cling to parents like normal children.

Social limitations are one of the most common disorders in ASD. This disorder directly affects the cognitive development in general and the social skills of ASD in particular.

* Limited listening comprehension

In daily communication, TTK does not pay attention to the words of the communication object. The child does not react when his name is called, does not care about people around him, does not follow other people's instructions even though he can hear normally. In addition, the child's language thinking is also difficult as he only understands direct, clear language. For example, when asking a child about an orange, asking the question What fruit is this? the child can answer. If the questioner changes the position of the question word: What fruit is this? the child will have difficulty.

The level of development of speech comprehension in communication of ASD is very diverse. Some children understand non-verbal language easily but have great difficulty understanding spoken language. Therefore, in the process of communicating with children of this group, it is necessary to use total communication language (speech accompanied by gestures, eye contact, facial expressions).

During the listening comprehension process, the process of processing communication signals or information of the TTK is slow. After listening for a while, the child understands and carries out the command as requested. Besides, during the listening comprehension process, TTK also encounters difficulties when the communication object speaks too fast, uses many strange and complicated words. Children understand familiar communication content, but have difficulty with unfamiliar things. The child's vocabulary is poor, monotonous, and the grammatical structure is often incorrect, so that


This is also the reason why children have difficulty understanding complex sentences containing a lot of information.

In the process of listening to and understanding the content of communication, if there are visual materials and illustrations, children can easily understand and think, helping the communication process better, because the ability to take pictures of TTK is very good.

Children do not understand abstract words, metaphors, comparisons, similes, innuendos... What children know and understand requires visual images. For example, when asking children what shape is this ? With a visual image, children answer triangle? How many sides does a triangle have ? Children answer 3 sides ? Without a visual image in front of them, asking children how many sides does a triangle have is an extremely difficult problem for them, and they cannot answer. Therefore, autism is limited in understanding speech related to abstract thinking and logical thinking [91].

Children have difficulty in communication situations that require abstract thinking, reasoning, and judgment, such as: When the mother says "I'm hungry ", the child has difficulty imagining that if the mother is hungry, the mother needs to eat something. Or in the classroom, there are play corners where the teacher asks " Do you like to play this game? " The child says " Yes ". The teacher invites the child to go out and play with his friends, but the child has difficulty knowing how to play the game.

Most ASDs have difficulty understanding speech, which directly affects their expressive language and cognitive development. All of the above is a deep hole that exists in the ASDs brain. Parents, teachers, and those involved in caring for and educating ASDs need to find ways to gradually fill that hole and teach children to sympathize, share, and communicate with people around them.

* Limitations in expression

The deficit in the ability to express and use words in communication in autism is very common and manifests in many different forms. Most of the speech development milestones of autism are slower than those of normal children. Some children have a monotone voice, do not know how to express themselves through their voice, do not know how to whisper, speak in a whisper, like to monologue, and do not know how to maintain a conversation.


When autistic children learn to speak, their voices are not natural. Almost all autistic children who can speak speak with a different tone, not rising or falling. Some children have a high voice, not knowing how to express high and low tones. If there is a change, the child goes up and down like singing rhythmically, without emphasizing the words that need to be emphasized. This shows that perhaps autistic children do not understand the meaning of voice in what they are trying to express.

In the process of expressive language communication, the expression of communication emotions in autism is limited. The boundary between joy and sadness in autism is difficult to distinguish, it is difficult to see the image on the child's face showing joy and happiness when giving or presenting a gift that the child likes.

When communicating, children do not look at the face of the person they are communicating with, which affects social communication and the ability to imitate speech, especially in pronunciation and use of speech. In some situations, children often have evasive eyes, do not look into the eyes of others when talking to know when it is their turn to speak, when to give way to others, children often interrupt others who are speaking, occasionally ask questions that are not related to the story being told.

ASD has a deficiency in sharing care and attention to people around them, leading to children being weak in making judgments and comments about situations, and at the same time, children cannot understand emotions and the relationship between things and phenomena. For example, when seeing their mother crying, children do not understand why their mother is crying... These deficiencies make it difficult for ASD to participate in society, and children become lost in the crowd when integrating into the community.

In the process of communication, most ASDs have difficulty with expressive language, and do not know how to express non-verbal behaviors. They do not know how to shake their heads to show disagreement, or frown to show discomfort. They do not understand non-verbal signals such as facial expressions and gestures.

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