Abstract
To investigate how people with Autism are affected by the presence of goals during imitation, we conducted a study to measure movement kinematics and eye movements during the imitation of goal-directed and goal-less hand movements. Our results showed that a control group imitated changes in movement kinematics and increased the level that they tracked the hand with their eyes, in the goal-less compared to goal-direction condition. In contrast, the ASD group exhibited more goal-directed eye movements, and failed to modulate the observed movement kinematics successfully in either condition. These results increase the evidence for impaired goal-less imitation in ASD, and suggest that there is a reliance on goal-directed strategies for imitation in ASD, even in the absence of visual goals.
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Notes
Eye tracking was attempted on all participants, but due to the difficulties in obtaining corneal reflection on participants wearing glasses, and with participant anxiety, data was not collected from all participants.
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Wild, K.S., Poliakoff, E., Jerrison, A. et al. Goal-Directed and Goal-Less Imitation in Autism Spectrum Disorder. J Autism Dev Disord 42, 1739–1749 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-011-1417-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-011-1417-4