Abstract
Aim: Some patterns of repetitive movements and their frequency have been proved to distinguish infants with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) from infants with Typical Development (TD) and Developmental Delay (DD) from 12 months of life on. The purpose of this study is to investigate if a specific repertoire of repetitive movements is present earlier in life, and if their higher rate and duration could differentiate infants with ASD from infants with DD and TD aged between 6 and 12 months.Method: We conducted a retrospective analysis of video-clips taken from home videos to compare the frequency and the duration of Repetitive Movement Episodes (RMEs) in a sample of 30 children equally distributed among the three groups.Results: Significantly higher total scores in bilateral RMEs with arms, hands, fingers, and lower limbs were found to distinguish ASD infants from both DD and TD infants, with a satisfactory diagnostic efficiency. No significant difference was found between the distributions of unilateral RMEs between ASD and DD/TD.Interpretation: Results indicate the presence at this age of an ASD-specific pattern of bilateral repetitive movements. We hypothesize a continuum between this pattern and the lack of variability in finalized and communicative movements and gestures observed in children with ASD during the second year of life.
Highlights
The presence of repetitive movements, described as the repetition of the same movement multiple times, is considered a necessary step for the development of voluntary purposeful movements and seems to have an adaptive role during limited temporal windows of psychomotor development (Thelen, 1979)
Higher frequency or duration of the following Repetitive Movement Episodes (RMEs) (Arms total, Hands bilateral and total, Fingers bilateral and total, Lower limbs bilateral and total) were observed in infants with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) compared with infants with Developmental Delay (DD)
With respect to the frequency of RMEs, we found that significantly higher total scores in RMEs with arms, hands, fingers and lower limbs were able to distinguish ASD infants from both DD and typical development (TD) infants
Summary
The presence of repetitive movements, described as the repetition of the same movement multiple times, is considered a necessary step for the development of voluntary purposeful movements and seems to have an adaptive role during limited temporal windows of psychomotor development (Thelen, 1979). In typical development (TD), the natural repertoire of early spontaneous motor activity, which is an expression of spontaneous neural activity (Einspieler and Prechtl, 2005), is able to provide the newborn’s brain with the appropriate opportunities for psychomotor learning by direct experience. Psychomotor learning benefits from a good variation (defined as a broad repertoire of behaviors for a specific motor function) and a good variability (that is the capacity to select from a broad repertoire the motor strategy that fits the situation best). Motor variation seems to precede and lay the foundation for the ability to adapt the acquired repertoire of movements to specific functions and to expand variability. Motor variation, expressed through a broad repertoire of different types of movements, seems to be a necessary prerequisite for variability, expressed through the functional and adaptive use of a motor behavior
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