Failure in Pantomime Action Execution Correlates with the Severity of Social Behavior Deficits in Children with Autism: A Praxis Study

Gizzonio, Valentina; Avanzini, Pietro; Campi, Cristina; Orivoli, Sonia; Piccolo, Benedetta; Cantalupo, Gaetano; Tassinari, C. A.; Rizzolatti, Giacomo; Fabbri-Destro, Maddalena

doi:10.1007/s10803-015-2461-2

Cited by 36 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Despite the reasonable conjecture that such errors could be the result of an imitation difference, motor issues cannot be excluded as a possible cause of palm orientation errors. From 50 to 80% of children with ASD exhibit motor impairments [15][16][17][18], including basic motor skill deficits in reaching and walking [19,20], gross and fine motor incoordination [15,17,21], as well as deficits in praxis/motor planning [22][23][24][25][26], and such deficits have been found to extend to deaf, signing children with ASD [27]. Children with motor issues with the articulation of signs might execute signs with the palm facing the midline of the body, which is the default resting position of the palm when the arms are hanging at one's sides.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Source of Palm Orientation Errors in the Signing of Children with ASD: Imitative, Motoric, or Both?

et al. 2020

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Palm orientation reversal errors (e.g., producing the ‘bye-bye’ gesture with palm facing inward rather than outward as is customary in American culture) have been documented in the signing of deaf and hearing children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and in the imitation of gestures by signing and non-signing children with ASD. However the source of these unusual errors remains opaque. Given that children with ASD have documented difficulties with both imitation and motor skills, it is important to clarify the nature of these errors. Here we present a longitudinal case study of a single child with ASD, a hearing, signing child of Deaf parents. Samples of the child’s signing were analyzed at ages 4;11, 6;2, 10;2, and 14;11. Lexical signs and fingerspelled letters were coded for the four parameters of sign articulation (handshape, location, movement, and palm orientation). Errors decreased for handshape, location, and movement after age 4;11, but increased on palm orientation from 4;11 and remained high, exceeding 55% of signs by 14;11. Fingerspelled letters contained a large proportion of 180-degree reversals, which suggest an origin in imitation differences, as well as midline-facing errors, suggestive of a motor origin. These longitudinal data suggest that palm orientation errors could be rooted in both imitation differences and motoric difficulties.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Source of Palm Orientation Errors in the Signing of Children with ASD: Imitative, Motoric, or Both?

et al. 2020

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“…The two major functional roles attributed to pantomime during everyday social interactions are gestural depiction during interpersonal communication (Clark, 1996) and demonstration during supervised learning (Gärdenfors, 2017). However, pantomime has a diverse profile of social uses (Zywiczynski et al, 2018) that spans from the performing art of mime theater (Hall, 2009) through to the neuropsychological testing that is done to diagnose syndromes, such as apraxia (Heilman et al, 1982;Hoeren et al, 2014), aphasia (Rose et al, 2017;van Nispen et al, 2018), and autism (Rogers et al, 1996;Smith and Bryson, 2007;Gizzonio et al, 2015).…”

Section: What Pantomime Is and Is Notmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Pantomime Works: Implications for Theories of Language Origin

et al. 2019

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Pantomime refers to iconic gesturing that is done for communicative purposes in the absence of speech. Gestural theories of the origins of language claim that a stage of pantomime preceded speech as an initial form of referential communication. However, gestural theories conceive of pantomime as a unitary process, and do not distinguish among the various means by which it can be produced. We attempt here to develop a scheme for classifying pantomime based on a proposal of two new sub-categories of pantomime, resulting in a final scheme comprised of five categories of iconic gesturing. We employ the scheme to establish associations between the category of pantomime used and the type of action and/or object being depicted. Based on these associations, we argue that there are two basic modes of pantomiming and that these apply to distinct semantic categories of referents. These modes of pantomiming lead to two alternative models for a gestural origin of language, one based on people and one based on the environment.

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“…In his seminal paper, he reported that infants with the disorder were unable to make anticipatory motor adjustments, e.g., they failed “ to assume at any time an anticipatory posture preparatory for being picked up” (Kanner, 1943, p. 242). Subsequent investigations confirmed that persons with ASD exhibit impairments in the motor domain; some scholars have even suggested that such impairments might represent a core component of autism (e.g., De Meyer et al., 1972; Jones and Prior, 1985; Rogers et al., 1996; Smith and Bryson, 2007; Cossu et al., 2012; Gizzonio et al., 2015; Bo et al., 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Do Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders Understand Pantomimic Events?

et al. 2019

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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.

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Failure in Pantomime Action Execution Correlates with the Severity of Social Behavior Deficits in Children with Autism: A Praxis Study

Cited by 36 publications

References 33 publications

The Source of Palm Orientation Errors in the Signing of Children with ASD: Imitative, Motoric, or Both?

The Source of Palm Orientation Errors in the Signing of Children with ASD: Imitative, Motoric, or Both?

How Pantomime Works: Implications for Theories of Language Origin

Do Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders Understand Pantomimic Events?

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