Cognition Processes of ASD Students: Recommendations for Mathematics Teaching and Learning Process

Abstract

This study aims to describe the cognitive process of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) students in solving mathematical problems in order to provide recommendations towards ensuring an appropriate learning process. It was conducted qualitatively using three ASD students in senior high school in Indonesia with high, moderate, and low intelligence. The student with high intelligence was able to receive and recall all the information in 4 forms, determine patterns, recall relevant information, make generalizations from patterns using two approaches in order to discover general formulas, and compare the general formula with other formulas. Meanwhile, the moderate intelligence student was able to receive and recall all information in two forms, determine patterns using image representation and concrete media, recall relevant information, and understand the pattern but unable to make generalizations towards obtaining a general formula due to the inability to understand the meaning of symbols. Moreover, low intelligence student was able to receive and recall a small piece of information in one form of representation, unable to determine the pattern because the subject was only able to understand qualitative information and unable to discover general formulas, and experienced difficulty in recalling relevant information.