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Author for correspondence: Andy Dong, E-mail: [email protected]
Introduction
At least since Herbert Simon first postulated particular forms of reasoning associated with design practice (Simon, 1969, 1995), design cognition has been a central theme of design studies (Chai & Xiao, 2012). Scholars have been searching for the possibly unique and essential cognitive processes at the foundation of design practice, regardless of design discipline (Goel & Pirolli, 1992). Part of the challenge in this search is the very definition of designing. For the purposes of this paper, designing is defined as the act of conceiving an object, environment, or situation for an intended purpose. Methodologically, disproving a null hypothesis about a cognitive process essential to design is nearly impossible: a hypothesis such as “Analogical reasoning is essential to design cognition” is hard to confirm, as rejecting the null hypothesis that it is inessential would require a population of people who are impaired in this cognitive process and yet are able to design. Finding a population that lacks or is deficient in analogical reasoning is extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible.
To circumvent this methodological challenge, scholars have taken a comparative psychology approach by examining evidence of cognitive processes in nonhuman animals that may be relevant in the evolution of design cognition in humans. A review of cognitive processes found in the great apes identified representation, recursion, and curiosity as likely to be essential cognitive processes associated with the conceptual part of design cognition (Dong et al., 2017).
This paper proposes another approach: to examine evidence on the cognitive behaviors associated with people with autism spectrum conditions (ASC). People with ASC are known to exhibit both cognitive impairments and exceptional abilities for imagination. As imagination is considered the cognitive ability sine qua non for design practice, cognitive behaviors within the autism spectrum may shed light on the cognitive processes essential to design. As cognitive scientists clarify the specific cognitive impairments, exceptional abilities, and information processing biases in ASC (e.g., Frith, 2003; van der Lugt, 2005), it may become possible to compare them with our understanding of design cognition to identify a set of essential cognitive processes.
The remainder of this paper continues as follows. First, we briefly review the literature on design cognition to establish a provisional set of...