Imitation Performance in Children with Autism and the Role of Visual Attention in Imitation

Akin-Bulbul, Isik; Özdemir, Selda

doi:10.1007/s10803-022-05726-5

Cited by 6 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…Nevertheless, it should be noted that their ASD group was 8-to 15-year-olds without intellectual disability. Our result contrasts with those of Akin-Bulbul and Ozdemir [25], who found diminished attention to the movement region of meaningful and meaningless actions on objects, gestures, and vocalizations in toddlers with ASD and those with TD. We argue that this discrepancy may be due to the types of imitation that were averaged by Akin-Bulbul and Ozdemir [25].…”

Section: Visual Attentioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

“…Our result contrasts with those of Akin-Bulbul and Ozdemir [25], who found diminished attention to the movement region of meaningful and meaningless actions on objects, gestures, and vocalizations in toddlers with ASD and those with TD. We argue that this discrepancy may be due to the types of imitation that were averaged by Akin-Bulbul and Ozdemir [25]. Although their ASD sample is similar to ours in terms of age and functioning level, comparison with their ndings is compromised by their clustering of heterogeneous types of imitation.…”

Section: Visual Attentioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

“…We hypothesized that young children with ASD exhibiting more attention towards the gesture demonstrations and the actors' faces during social cues would display more accurate imitation. Furthermore, in line with previous literature [2,20,21,25,31], we hypothesized that children with ASD would show diminished attention to the demonstrators' face and perform more poorly than their TD peers and that imitation performance would be positively associated with age and developmental skills. Such results would help to unravel the roles of visual attention and motor execution and their contributions to imitation behavior.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 54%

“…To examine these factors, Vivanti and collaborators developed innovative imitation tasks combining eye-tracking technology and video-recordings of children's imitative behaviors [22][23][24]. In addition, Akin-Bulbul and Ozdemir [25] recently developed an eye-tracking paradigm combined with video-recordings, and studied six types of imitation (meaningful and meaningless gestures, vocalizations, and actions on objects) in toddlers with ASD. These studies [22][23][24][25] found contrasting results regarding both visual exploration and imitation performance.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a subsequent study using a different task, the authors [22] revealed that preschoolers with ASD spent less time looking at the demonstrator's face and also showed poorer imitation skills than children with TD and developmental delay (DD). Akin-Bulbul and Ozdemir [25] showed that toddlers with ASD displayed diminished attention to the face and action regions. Moreover, these authors found that meaningful gestures were the only type of gesture where participants with DD showed better imitation performance than participants with ASD.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Gesture imitation performance and visual exploration in young children with autism spectrum disorder

Latrèche

Kojovic

Pittet

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Background Imitation behaviors develop very early and increase in frequency and complexity during childhood. Most studies in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) support a general decrement in imitation performance. To better understand this phenomenon in ASD, factors related to visual attention and motor execution have been proposed. However, these studies used various paradigms and explored different types of imitation in heterogeneous samples, leading to inconsistent findings. The present study examines imitation performance related to visual attention and motor execution. We focused on gesture imitation, consistently reported as more affected than imitation of actions with objects in ASD. We also investigated the influence of meaningful and meaningless gestures on imitation performance. Methods Our imitation eye-tracking task used a video of an actor who demonstrated gestures and prompted children to imitate them. The demonstrations comprised three types of gestures: meaningful (MF) and meaningless (ML) hand gestures, and meaningless facial gestures. We measured the total fixation duration to the actor’ face during child-directed speech and gesture demonstrations. During the eye-tracking task, we video-recorded children to later assess their imitation performance. Our sample comprised 100 participants, among which were 84 children with ASD (aged 3.55 ± 1.11 years). Results Our results showed that the ASD and typically developing (TD) groups globally displayed the same visual attention toward the face (during child-directed speech) and toward gesture demonstrations, although children with ASD spent less time fixating on the face during FAC stimuli. Visual exploration of actors’ faces and gestures did not influence imitation performance. Rather, imitation performance was positively correlated with chronological and developmental age. Moreover, imitation of MF gestures was associated with less severe autistic symptoms, whereas imitation of ML gestures was positively correlated with higher non-verbal cognitive skills and fine motor skills. Conclusions These findings contribute to a better understanding of the complexity of imitation. We delineated the distinct nature of imitation of MF and ML hand gestures in children with ASD. We discuss clinical implications in relation to assessment and intervention programs.

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Section: Visual Attentioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

Section: Visual Attentioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 54%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Gesture imitation performance and visual exploration in young children with autism spectrum disorder

Latrèche

Kojovic

Pittet

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Oromotor skills in autism spectrum disorder: A scoping review

et al. 2023

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Oromotor functioning plays a foundational role in spoken communication and feeding, two areas of significant difficulty for many autistic individuals. However, despite years of research and established differences in gross and fine motor skills in this population, there is currently no clear consensus regarding the presence or nature of oral motor control deficits in autistic individuals. In this scoping review, we summarize research published between 1994 and 2022 to answer the following research questions: (1) What methods have been used to investigate oromotor functioning in autistic individuals? (2) Which oromotor behaviors have been investigated in this population? and (3) What conclusions can be drawn regarding oromotor skills in this population? Seven online databases were searched resulting in 107 studies meeting our inclusion criteria. Included studies varied widely in sample characteristics, behaviors analyzed, and research methodology. The large majority (81%) of included studies report a significant oromotor abnormality related to speech production, nonspeech oromotor skills, or feeding within a sample of autistic individuals based on age norms or in comparison to a control group. We examine these findings to identify trends, address methodological aspects hindering cross‐study synthesis and generalization, and provide suggestions for future research.

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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 Performance in Children with Autism and the Role of Visual Attention in Imitation

Cited by 6 publications

References 62 publications

Gesture imitation performance and visual exploration in young children with autism spectrum disorder

Gesture imitation performance and visual exploration in young children with autism spectrum disorder

Oromotor skills in autism spectrum disorder: A scoping review

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

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