Abstract
Impairments of motor representation of actions have been reported as a core component of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Individuals with ASD have difficulties in a number of functions such as assuming anticipatory postures, imitating body movements, producing and understanding gestures, and recognizing motor intentions. Such cognitive-motor abilities are all involved in pantomime. However, the available evidence on the production and comprehension of pantomime in individuals with ASD is still inconclusive. The current investigation assessed pantomime comprehension in 40 children with high-functioning ASD and 40 children with typical development balanced for age, IQ, level of formal education, and cognitive profile. The participants were asked to watch video recordings of pantomimes representing simple transitive events enacted by actors and match them to the corresponding pictorial representations. Such pantomimes were delivered in two conditions with different levels of information content (i.e., lean or rich). The two groups of children performed similarly on these tasks. Nonetheless, children with ASD who were administered the pantomimes in the lean condition performed worse than participants who were administered the informatively richer pantomimes. The methodological implications for interpretation of previous findings and future studies are discussed.
Highlights
Autism Spectrum Disorders and Praxic CompetenceAutism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by two core symptoms: (1) the presence of restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities, and (2) persistent deficits in social communication and interaction [DSM-5 American Psychiatric Association (APA), 2013]
When the two groups were divided into the four subgroups to assess the role of the two conditions (i.e., IL vs. IR), the subgroup of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) who saw the informatively lean video clips performed worse than both the children with ASD and typical development (TD) who saw the informatively rich ones; the subgroup of children with TD who saw informatively lean video clips obtained lower scores than the subgroup of TD children who saw the informatively rich ones
The results showed that the ASD group performed significantly better than the control group of children with the same verbal mental age, suggesting that children with ASD do not have impaired gesture recognition
Summary
Autism Spectrum Disorders and Praxic CompetenceAutism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by two core symptoms: (1) the presence of restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities, and (2) persistent deficits in social communication and interaction [DSM-5 American Psychiatric Association (APA), 2013]. The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5 American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013) describes a cluster of symptoms that affect the social domain by including difficulties in nonverbal communicative behavior, abnormalities in body language, or deficits in gestural understanding and use Such problems have already been highlighted by Kanner (1943). Studies have showed that school-aged children with ASD exhibit motor delays in tasks such as graphomotor control, manual dexterity, and balance (Miyahara et al, 1997; Hilton et al, 2007; Provost et al, 2007; Fuentes et al, 2009) Such difficulties in the basic level of motor control often persist into childhood and may adversely affect the development of a number of other abilities, such as drawing, speaking, and playing (Jansiewicz et al, 2006)
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