Neuromotor and cognitive responses of adults with autism spectrum disorder compared to neurotypical adults

Abstract

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a common neurodevelopmental disorder, whose core symptom domains include impaired social communication and narrowed interests and/or repetitive behaviors; in addition, deficits of general cognition, neuromotor function, and movement ability can be observed. This study was designed to examine differences in neuromotor and cognitive functions for a group of young adults with ASD and age-matched controls. It was also of interest to assess whether changes in the intra-individual variability (IIV) of these selected neuromotor and cognitive tasks also occurred. Increased IIV in persons with ASD may reveal important organizational features of their neuromotor system that differ from neurotypical controls. Twenty neurotypical adult individuals (24.3 ± 2.8 years) and twenty adults with a clinician-assigned diagnosis of ASD (21.2 ± 4.4 years) participated in this study. Specific cognitive and motor assessments included Trails Making Tests A&B, Symbol Digit Modalities Test, Purdue Pegboard Test, simple reaction time, finger tapping, hand grip strength, balance, and gait. Results revealed that the ASD adults exhibited decreased upper limb strength and slower responses for finger tapping, hand dexterity, reaction times, and gait compared to the non-ASD controls. The general slowing of motor responses for the persons with ASD was also associated with increased within-subject variability during the reaction time, finger tapping, hand grip, and gait assessments compared to neurotypical adults, illustrating that IIV measures may be a useful marker of widespread neuromotor dysfunction for adults with ASD. Overall, these findings are consistent with clinical observations that abnormalities of movement performance and cognitive performance are an associated feature of ASD in young adults.

Use of Augmented Reality with a Motion-Controlled Game Utilizing Alphabet Letters and Numbers to Improve Performance and Reaction Time Skills for People with Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…We do consider that this was perhaps an easy task for the control group from the outset, and so the controls did not improve after practice. This result is consistent with Morrison et al 35 who report that reaction time in ASD participants was slower than in a control group composed of individuals with typical development.…”

“…Moreover, the motor function of young adults with ASD was characterized by slower responses with decreased finger touch speed and overall hand dexterity, resulting in slower reaction times. According to Morrison et al 35 these motor responses may reflect the phenotype or phenosubtype of young adults with ASD and that this may be a useful marker of neuromotor dysfunction in this population. Herrero et al 29 investigated the performance of reaction time in ASD and TD participants after using a virtual reality (VR) task (typical laboratory timing coincident task) and the results indicated that individuals with ASD had the ability to respond to movements, and that the training in VR tasks had positive influence on reaction time; however, there was lower performance than typical development controls.…”

Oscillatory entrainment mechanisms and anticipatory predictive processes in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

“…While not a specific focus of the current study, it is notable that the ASD group was significantly slower overall in both cued and uncued conditions. It bears emphasizing that this was not a modest difference but was found to be over 100ms, and that RT slowing in cognitive tasks is common in ASD across a range of tasks (Brandwein et al, 2013;Van der Hallen et al, 2015;Pirrone et al, 2017;Pirrone et al, 2020), and, among other changes in neuromotor functions, might represent motor control deficits in individuals with ASD (Morrison et al, 2018).…”

Quantitative Analysis of Motor Behavior in Adults with High Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…Our data show no reduction in acceleration or velocity when comparing ASD and TD walking data. Reduced walking speed was found in ASD by few studies (Ambrosini et al, 1998;Armitano et al, 2020;Morrison et al, 2018;Weiss et al, 2013), but several others reported no quantitative differences between ASD and TD (Biffi et al, 2018;Calhoun et al, 2011;Chester & Calhoun, 2012;Hallett et al, 1993;Manicolo et al, 2019;Nayate et al, 2012;Vernazza-Martin et al, 2005). Our results corroborate the findings of the majority of studies on walking speed in ASD.…”

“…One review of gait abnormalities in autistic children emphasizes the inconsistencies of results, but reports the most common atypicalities as increased step width and decreased stride length (Kindregan, Gallagher, & Gormley, 2015). In adults, one study found no differences in quantitative gait parameters between ASD and TD (Hallett et al, 1993), whereas two recent studies report slower walking speed in the ASD group (Armitano et al, 2020;Morrison et al, 2018).…”