Imitation in Autism Spectrum Disorders

Vivanti, Giacomo; Hamilton, Antonia F. de C.

doi:10.1002/9781118911389.hautc12

Cited by 21 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 211 publications

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“…The typical kinematics could be imitated by rescaling a movement from an existing motor repertoire, whereas the atypical kinematics required participants to observe and represent the atypical kinematics to reorganize the sensorimotor system for trial‐to‐trial movement reproduction. Both the autistic and neurotypical groups successfully reproduced the absolute movement time goal, which indicated they attended to the modeled stimulus and learned to imitate the absolute timing parameter (de Hamilton et al, 2007; Vivanti & Hamilton, 2014). However, the autism group was significantly less accurate at imitating the novel atypical biological kinematics.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Observational learning of atypical biological kinematics in autism

Foster,

Bennett,

Pullar

et al. 2023

Autism Research

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Observing and voluntarily imitating the biological kinematics displayed by a model underpins the acquisition of new motor skills via sensorimotor processes linking perception with action. Differences in voluntary imitation in autism could be related to sensorimotor processing activity during action‐observation of biological motion, as well as how sensorimotor integration processing occurs across imitation attempts. Using an observational practice protocol, which minimized the active contribution of the peripheral sensorimotor system, we examined the contribution of sensorimotor processing during action‐observation. The data showed that autistic participants imitated both the temporal duration and atypical kinematic profile of the observed movement with a similar level of accuracy as neurotypical participants. These findings suggest the lower‐level perception‐action processes responsible for encoding biological kinematics during the action‐observation phase of imitation are operational in autism. As there was no task‐specific engagement of the peripheral sensorimotor system during observational practice, imitation difficulties in autism are most likely underpinned by sensorimotor integration issues related to the processing of efferent and (re)afferent sensorimotor information during trial‐to‐trial motor execution.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Observational learning of atypical biological kinematics in autism

Foster,

Bennett,

Pullar

et al. 2023

Autism Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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Higher or lower? Interpersonal behavioral and neural synchronization of movement imitation in autistic children

Du,

Zhang,

Chen

et al. 2024

Autism Research

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How well autistic children can imitate movements and how their brain activity synchronizes with the person they are imitating have been understudied. The current study adopted functional near‐infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning and employed a task involving real interactions involving meaningful and meaningless movement imitation to explore the fundamental nature of imitation as a dynamic and interactive process. Experiment 1 explored meaningful and meaningless gesture imitation. The results revealed that autistic children exhibited lower imitation accuracy and behavioral synchrony than non‐autistic children when imitating both meaningful and meaningless gestures. Specifically, compared to non‐autistic children, autistic children displayed significantly higher interpersonal neural synchronization (INS) in the right inferior parietal lobule (r‐IPL) (channel 12) when imitating meaningful gestures but lower INS when imitating meaningless gestures. Experiment 2 further investigated the imitation of four types of meaningless movements (orofacial movements, transitive movements, limb movements, and gestures). The results revealed that across all four movement types, autistic children exhibited significantly lower imitation accuracy, behavioral synchrony, and INS in the r‐IPL (channel 12) than non‐autistic children. This study is the first to identify INS as a biomarker of movement imitation difficulties in autistic individuals. Furthermore, an intra‐ and interindividual imitation mechanism model was proposed to explain the underlying causes of movement imitation difficulties in autistic individuals.

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Imitation

Lawton¹

2020

Encyclopedia of Autism Spectrum Disorders

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Imitation in Autism Spectrum Disorders

Cited by 21 publications

References 211 publications

Observational learning of atypical biological kinematics in autism

Observational learning of atypical biological kinematics in autism

Higher or lower? Interpersonal behavioral and neural synchronization of movement imitation in autistic children

Imitation

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