Intention Understanding in Autism

Abstract

When we observe a motor act (e.g. grasping a cup) done by another individual, we extract, according to how the motor act is performed and its context, two types of information: the goal (grasping) and the intention underlying it (e.g. grasping for drinking). Here we examined whether children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) are able to understand these two aspects of motor acts. Two experiments were carried out. In the first, one group of high-functioning children with ASD and one of typically developing (TD) children were presented with pictures showing hand-object interactions and asked what the individual was doing and why. In half of the “why” trials the observed grip was congruent with the function of the object (“why-use” trials), in the other half it corresponded to the grip typically used to move that object (“why-place” trials). The results showed that children with ASD have no difficulties in reporting the goals of individual motor acts. In contrast they made several errors in the why task with all errors occurring in the “why-place” trials. In the second experiment the same two groups of children saw pictures showing a hand-grip congruent with the object use, but within a context suggesting either the use of the object or its placement into a container. Here children with ASD performed as TD children, correctly indicating the agent's intention. In conclusion, our data show that understanding others' intentions can occur in two ways: by relying on motor information derived from the hand-object interaction, and by using functional information derived from the object's standard use. Children with ASD have no deficit in the second type of understanding, while they have difficulties in understanding others' intentions when they have to rely exclusively on motor cues.

State-Dependent TMS Reveals a Hierarchical Representation of Observed Acts in the Temporal, Parietal, and Premotor Cortices

“…In the literature, right-lateralized effects of action observation have been found in tasks that contained features of prediction in time of the outcome of the action or of the final intention of the agent (Iacoboni et al 2005;Hamilton and Grafton 2008;Liepelt et al 2008). These tasks are clearly different from the one of the present experiment, which consists in recognizing ''what'' an observed agent is doing in that exact moment as opposed to ''why'' the agent is doing it (Boria et al 2009). Aside from imaging experiments, however, prior to the present study, a causal role of the inferior parietal cortex in action coding has been suggested only by human lesional studies (Heilman et al 1982;Rothi et al 1985).…”

The functional role of the parieto-frontal mirror circuit: interpretations and misinterpretations

“…Therefore, the intentions of others do not 'intrude' into the mirror system of children with ASD and these intentions are not understood 'from the inside' but only 'from the outside'. This interpretation is supported by a recent study showing that to understand the intentions of other people, children with ASD do not rely on the observed motor behaviour but on the semantics of the object that is being manipulated or on the context in which the motor act takes place 125 . Figure is Such motor-based understanding seems to be a primary way in which individuals relate to one another, as shown by its presence not only in humans and monkeys, but also in evolutionarily distant species, such as swamp sparrows 4 and zebra finches 5 .…”

Two systems for action comprehension in autism

“…More recently, a study by Boria,FabbriDestro, Cattaneo, Sparaci, Sinigaglia, Santelli,et al (2009) demonstrated poorer understanding of subsequent actions in children with autism. In this study, children were shown static images of a hand either touching an object, grasping-to-use it or grasping-to-place it.…”