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Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

Gepubliceerd in:

14-10-2022 | Original Paper

Can Enactment and Motor Imagery Improve Working Memory for Instructions in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Children with Intellectual Disability?

Auteurs: Tingting Xie, Huan Ma, Lijuan Wang, Yanfei Du

Gepubliceerd in: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders | Uitgave 1/2024

Abstract

This study explored the impacts of enactment and motor imagery on working memory for instructions in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), children with intellectual disability (ID) and typically developing (TD) children. The participants were asked to hear (hearing condition), imagine enacting (motor imagery condition) and actually enact (enactment condition) instruction sequences and then recall them orally. Compared with the hearing condition, all groups performed better in the enactment condition, with the greatest advantage exhibited by the TD group; however, only the TD children performed better in the motor imagery condition. In summary, enactment has a weaker facilitating effect on ASD children and ID children than on TD children, and motor imagery is ineffective in the former two groups.

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The episodic buffer is a component of working memory that “binds” information from various working memory subsystems (i.e., the phonological loop and the visuospatial sketchpad) and related long-term semantic and linguistic knowledge activated by that information into a coherent whole (Baddeley, 2012). The central executive system is a component of working memory that regulates and allocates attention resources (Baddeley, 2012; Xie et al., 2021b).

In a working memory task, the integration and mutual transformation of movement and speech need to be realized with the help of the episodic buffer (Wang et al., 2022; Xie et al., 2021b).

Studies investigating the enactment effect also found a motor imagery advantage (e.g., Ma et al., 2021). However, these studies used this phenomenon to determine whether imagery processing plays a role in the enactment effect and thus to reveal the mechanism underlying this effect. Therefore, theories concerning the enactment effect serve enactment rather than motor imagery. In contrast to theories concerning the enactment effect, simulation theory serves motor imagery.

The SPM results are divided into superior intelligence (95%), good intelligence (75%), average intelligence (50%), lower-middle intelligence (10% and 25%) and mental deficiency (1% and 5%) levels (Zhang & Wang, 1989). Unlike the SPM, in the PPVT-R, intelligence is not divided into levels.

The CARS-CV score is the total score, and the cutoff point for ASD is 30. In our study, the CARS-CV scores were 30–36 for ASD children, 16–18 for ID children and 15 for TD children. The ABC-CV score is the total score, and the cutoff point for ASD is 31. In our study, the ABC-CV scores were 31–66 for ASD children, 1–4 for ID children and 0 for TD children.

Pearson correlation analyses were conducted for age and test scores in each condition for each group. For the ASD group, scores in each condition had a low correlation with age, r_{the hearing condition} = − .014, p_{the hearing condition} = .954; r_{the enactment condition} = − .104, p_{the enactment condition} = .662; r_{the motor imagery condition} = − .065, p_{the imagery condition} = .786. For the ID group, scores in each condition had a low correlation with age, r_{the hearing condition} = .217, p_{the hearing condition} = .358; r_{the enactment condition} = .341, p_{the enactment condition} = .141; r_{the motor imagery condition} = .222, p_{the imagery condition} = .347. For the TD group, scores in each condition had a low correlation with age, r_{the hearing condition} = .038, p_{the hearing condition} = .873; r_{the enactment condition} = − .009, p_{the enactment condition} = .971; r_{the motor imagery condition} = .290, p_{the imagery condition} = .215. Additionally, Pearson correlation analyses were conducted for age and the enactment effect (i.e., span_enactment–span_hearing) and for age and the motor imagery advantage (i.e., span_{motor imagery}–span_hearing) in each group. For the ASD group, the enactment effect had a low correlation with age, r = − .095, p = .690; the motor imagery advantage also had a low correlation with age, r = − .091, p = .702. For the ID group, the enactment effect had a low correlation with age, r = .272, p = .245 and the motor imagery advantage had a low correlation with age, r = .102, p = .670. For the TD group, the enactment effect had a low correlation with age, r = − .044, p = .852 and the motor imagery advantage had a low correlation with age, r = .330, p = .156. Therefore, in each group recruited for our study, older children did not show better or worse performance in working memory for instructions compared to younger ones.

Since no previous studies compared the enactment effect between ID and TD children in the long-term memory framework, it is unclear whether the motor ability, receptive and expressive vocabulary skills, and episodic buffer functioning of ID children can meet the requirements of the enactment effect. These weaker abilities may be related to the difference between the ID and TD children.

The materials and procedures of the classical hand laterality task were the same as those in the study by Conson et al., except the key pressing of all participants was performed by an adult unaware of the purpose of the test to reduce experimental errors (some ASD and ID children often press the wrong button). The accuracy and response time of the participants were measured. However, since some ASD and TD children had pauses during the test, resulting in errors in response time, we only analyzed the results of accuracy.

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Titel: Can Enactment and Motor Imagery Improve Working Memory for Instructions in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Children with Intellectual Disability?
Auteurs: Tingting Xie
Huan Ma
Lijuan Wang
Yanfei Du
Publicatiedatum: 14-10-2022
Uitgeverij: Springer US
Gepubliceerd in: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders / Uitgave 1/2024
Print ISSN: 0162-3257
Elektronisch ISSN: 1573-3432
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-022-05780-z

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