An embodied approach to understand behavioural characteristics in subjects with autism spectrum disorders

Abstract

There are three main areas of impairment in autism: social interaction, communication and repetitive-stereotyped behaviors. While over a long time orthodox cognitive psychology tried to explain the background of these symptoms, nowadays embodiment theories also seem to be useful tools to grasp the real nature of the disease and get a coherent picture about it. The significance of body states, the perceiver's experiences, dynamic interaction between the organism and its environment, and the emergent nature of the connected processes have increased. This study focused on the autistic children's cognitive development and aimed to explore several aspects of it. Accordingly, the sensory-perceptual processes and the participating children's object use were investigated. The main research methods were questionnaires that were filled in by the parents, participant observation via object play and eye-movement analysis during static and dynamic stimuli. The results confirmed different behavioral patterns by children with autism. Thus, for example, hyper-/hyposensitivity, a reduced rate of creative/pretend activities and a lower level of the preference of social effects could be explored in the autistic group more often than it was found in the case of individuals with typical development. In this way, more aspects of the disease could be clearly interpreted using an embodied approach to the behavioural characteristics, although further studies are required to explore these phenomena in a wider range.Disclosure of interestThe author has not supplied his/her declaration of competing interest.