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Gross Motor Development, Movement Abnormalities, and Early Identification of Autism

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Abstract

Gross motor development (supine, prone, rolling, sitting, crawling, walking) and movement abnormalities were examined in the home videos of infants later diagnosed with autism (regression and no regression subgroups), developmental delays (DD), or typical development. Group differences in maturity were found for walking, prone, and supine, with the DD and Autism-No Regression groups both showing later developing motor maturity than typical children. The only statistically significant differences in movement abnormalities were in the DD group; the two autism groups did not differ from the typical group in rates of movement abnormalities or lack of protective responses. These findings do not replicate previous investigations suggesting that early motor abnormalities seen on home video can assist in early identification of autism.

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Notes

  1. Two forms of roll behavior were originally coded: roll supine-to-prone and roll prone-to-supine. The frequencies of both types of roll behavior, however, were too low to warrant separate analyses and therefore were collapsed into a single “roll” behavior.

  2. We used child’s average age at each maturity level as the best representation of reliable performance of the respective motor behavior at any given maturity level. Although we also examined earliest age of maturity level appearance, the results were not substantially different than those presented for mean age. For subjects who did not have multiple instances of a behavior at a given maturity level, the data for that maturity level was not used in the analysis.

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Acknowledgments

The work in this manuscript was supported by grant U19 HD35468 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The authors would like to acknowledge Karim Bayanzay, Corinna Conway, Jackelynn Dao, Naomi Ekas, Jason Gray, Elizabeth Loomer, Matthew Ong, Angela Shih, and Christina Siller who coded the many hours of video presented here, as well as Diane Larzelere who prepared the manuscript. We are very grateful to Grace Baranek for sharing her content coding system with us. We are also greatly indebted to the many families who shared their home videotapes and the lives of their families with us.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, University of California – Davis Health System, M.I.N.D. Institute, 2825 50th Street, Sacramento, CA, 95817, USA

    Sally Ozonoff, Gregory S. Young, Stacy Goldring, Laura Greiss-Hess, Joel Steele & Sally J. Rogers

  2. Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Adriana M. Herrera

  3. Child Study Center, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA

    Suzanne Macari

  4. Department of Psychiatry, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Denver, CO, USA

    Susan Hepburn

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  1. Sally Ozonoff
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  2. Gregory S. Young
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Correspondence to Sally Ozonoff.

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Ozonoff, S., Young, G.S., Goldring, S. et al. Gross Motor Development, Movement Abnormalities, and Early Identification of Autism. J Autism Dev Disord 38, 644–656 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-007-0430-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-007-0430-0

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