Color obsessions and phobias in autism spectrum disorders : the case of J.G

Abstract

The current study is the first investigation of color 'obsessions' and 'phobias' in ASD. We investigate the color perception and cognition of J.G., a boy with ASD who has a strong obsession with blue, and a strong phobia of other colors. J.G.'s performance on a series of color tasks (color-entity association; chromatic discrimination; color classification) is compared to 13 children with and without autism who do not have color obsessions or phobias. The findings lead to the formalization of two hypotheses: (i) color obsessions and phobias in individuals with ASD are related to an unusually strong ability to associate colors with entities; (ii) color obsessions are related to hyposensitivity, and color phobias to hypersensitivity, in the affected regions of color space.