Elsevier

Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders

Volume 4, Issue 3, July–September 2010, Pages 438-443
Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders

Autism severity and motor abilities correlates of imitation situations in children with autism spectrum disorders

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2009.10.016Get rights and content

Abstract

Impaired performance in a range of imitation tasks has been described in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and several underlying mechanism have been suggested. This study examined whether imitation abilities are related to autism severity and to motor skills. Furthermore, the performance of children with ASD in four imitation situations (body movements and ‘action on objects’, using meaningful and non-meaningful tasks) was compared. Twenty-five children aged 32–51 months diagnosed with autism (23) and ASD (2) were evaluated for autism severity using the Autism Diagnosis Observation Schedule and for gross and fine motor skills using the Peabody Developmental Motor Scales. Controlling for cognitive level, imitation abilities in all four situations correlated significantly only with autism severity measures and mostly with socio-communication deficits. Motor abilities were below average and did not correlate with imitation abilities nor with autism severity. Comparison of the four imitation situations revealed that performances of meaningful actions were better than non-meaningful actions and imitation of ‘action on objects’ was better than imitation of body movements. The current research supports the fact that socio-communication deficits and not motor abilities are linked to imitation abilities in young children with autism.

Section snippets

Participants

Twenty-five children, one girl and 24 boys, aged 32–51 months (M = 40.0, SD = 5.7), diagnosed with autism (N = 23) or autism spectrum (N = 2) participated in the current study. All the children underwent clinical evaluation by a neurodevelopmental pediatrician. Children who were enrolled in the study met a clinical diagnosis of ASD based on the cut-off points on the Autism Diagnosis Interview-Revised (ADI-R) (Lord, Rutter, & LeCouteur, 1994) and Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) (Lord,

Results

The first question of the study was whether imitation abilities in ASD are correlated to autism severity and to gross and fine motor skills. Partial correlations were conducted in the four imitation situations controlling for cognitive level. It is well known in the literature that imitation abilities are highly related to overall developmental status (Rogers et al., 2003). Therefore, cognitive ability was controlled in all the correlation analyses. Autism severity measures included the ADOS

Discussion

This study examined specific aspects of the imitation deficits in young children with ASD. Several possible mechanisms underlying imitation deficits in ASD have been proposed. In this study, the correlations between imitation abilities and autism severity and motor (gross and fine) abilities were investigated. Of the developmental measures studied here, only autism severity was found to be an important factor that was highly related to imitation abilities. These findings are in accordance with

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to ALUT, The Israeli National Autism Association for the excellent cooperation of their center-based autism specific preschools (parents and professionals) with this study. We also thank Ira Goldman for the technical assistance she provided.

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