Development of Motor Imagery in School-Aged Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Longitudinal Study

Abstract

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a diagnosis based on social communication deficits and prevalence of repetitive stereotyped behaviors, but sensorimotor disturbances are commonly exhibited. This longitudinal study aimed at exploring the development of the ability to form mental motor representations (motor imagery; MI) in 14 children with ASD and 17 typically developing (TD) children at 7, 8 and 9 years of age. MI was investigated using a hand laterality paradigm from which response times (RT) and error rates were extracted and compared with performance on a visually based mental rotation task (VI). A criterion task was used to ensure that the children could perform the task. The results showed wide performance variability in the ASD group with more failures than TD in the MI criterion task, especially at 7 years. For all age levels and both the MI and VI tasks, the error rates were significantly higher and RTs longer for the ASD group compared with TD. Signs of MI strategies were however noted in the ASD group as biomechanically constrained orientations had longer RTs than less constrained orientations, a RT pattern that differed from the VI task. The presence of MI in the ASD group was most evident at 9 years, but the error rates remained high at all ages, both in the MI and VI task. In comparison, the TD group showed stable MI strategies at all ages. These findings indicate that MI ability is delayed and/or impaired in children with ASD which may be related to difficulties performing required mental rotations.

Motor imagery in autism: a systematic review

“…A recent study used the hand rotation task to compare the same autistic and non-autistic children on the hand rotation task at three different age levels – 7, 8, and 9 years ( Johansson et al, 2022 ). The autistic children had longer RTs and in contrast to the non-autistic group, who showed a biomechanical effect at each age point, they only showed a significant biomechanical effect at 7 and 9 years of age.…”

“…This review aimed to provide an understanding of the current state of knowledge around MI in autism. Focusing on the implicit tasks, there appears to be good evidence of a biomechanical effect in children for hand laterality tasks ( Conson et al, 2016 ; Chen et al, 2018 ; Johansson et al, 2022 ), suggesting the presence of MI. Where a biomechanical effect was absent in the autistic group, this seems to be explained by methodological differences such as reduced stimulus richness or limitations in power ( Conson et al, 2013 ; Johansson et al, 2022 ).…”

“…Focusing on the implicit tasks, there appears to be good evidence of a biomechanical effect in children for hand laterality tasks ( Conson et al, 2016 ; Chen et al, 2018 ; Johansson et al, 2022 ), suggesting the presence of MI. Where a biomechanical effect was absent in the autistic group, this seems to be explained by methodological differences such as reduced stimulus richness or limitations in power ( Conson et al, 2013 ; Johansson et al, 2022 ). Interestingly, all of these hand rotation studies involve children and adolescents, with none being performed with autistic adults.…”

Motor imagery for paediatric neurorehabilitation: how much do we know? Perspectives from a systematic review

“…Accordingly, the neural correlate of imitation, the mirror neuron system (MNS), is assumed to be dysfunctional in ASD, ensuing deficit of imitation as one of the crucial behavioral features in ASD ( Chan and Han, 2020 ). It is well-known that the MNS is involved in the imitation of movements, but also in action recognition, MI and motor learning process ( Johansson et al, 2022 ). When MI was explored using the HLT task to investigate the development of MI in children with ASD, results showed a performance variability in the affected group with more deficits than the control group in the MI criterion task ( Conson et al, 2013 ).…”