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. 2021 Dec;14(12):2640-2653.
doi: 10.1002/aur.2611. Epub 2021 Sep 18.

Differences in the production and perception of communicative kinematics in autism

James P Trujillo  1   2 , Asli Özyürek  1   2 , Cornelis C Kan  3 , Irina Sheftel-Simanova  4 , Harold Bekkering  1
Affiliations

Differences in the production and perception of communicative kinematics in autism

James P Trujillo et al. Autism Res. 2021 Dec.

Abstract

In human communication, social intentions and meaning are often revealed in the way we move. In this study, we investigate the flexibility of human communication in terms of kinematic modulation in a clinical population, namely, autistic individuals. The aim of this study was twofold: to assess (a) whether communicatively relevant kinematic features of gestures differ between autistic and neurotypical individuals, and (b) if autistic individuals use communicative kinematic modulation to support gesture recognition. We tested autistic and neurotypical individuals on a silent gesture production task and a gesture comprehension task. We measured movement during the gesture production task using a Kinect motion tracking device in order to determine if autistic individuals differed from neurotypical individuals in their gesture kinematics. For the gesture comprehension task, we assessed whether autistic individuals used communicatively relevant kinematic cues to support recognition. This was done by using stick-light figures as stimuli and testing for a correlation between the kinematics of these videos and recognition performance. We found that (a) silent gestures produced by autistic and neurotypical individuals differ in communicatively relevant kinematic features, such as the number of meaningful holds between movements, and (b) while autistic individuals are overall unimpaired at recognizing gestures, they processed repetition and complexity, measured as the amount of submovements perceived, differently than neurotypicals do. These findings highlight how subtle aspects of neurotypical behavior can be experienced differently by autistic individuals. They further demonstrate the relationship between movement kinematics and social interaction in high-functioning autistic individuals. LAY SUMMARY: Hand gestures are an important part of how we communicate, and the way that we move when gesturing can influence how easy a gesture is to understand. We studied how autistic and typical individuals produce and recognize hand gestures, and how this relates to movement characteristics. We found that autistic individuals moved differently when gesturing compared to typical individuals. In addition, while autistic individuals were not worse at recognizing gestures, they differed from typical individuals in how they interpreted certain movement characteristics.

Keywords: autism; gesture; kinematics; motion tracking; movement.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Schematic overview of gesture comprehension task and stimuli. Trials start with a prime, followed by the stimulus video, after which the two response options are again shown and the participant is able to respond. After this, there is a short interstimulus interval (ISI)
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Results from the linear discriminant analysis. Panel (a) shows the permutation curve for significance testing of the model discriminatory power. The distribution curve shows the accuracy of the model under the shuffled‐data simulations, with chance‐level (50%) indicated by a red vertical line. The accuracy of the real model (60%) is indicated with the blue line, showing that it falls outside of the distribution of randomly shuffled data. Panels (b and c) show the MDS scatterplots, with panel (b) using data from the temporal kinematic features (i.e., peak velocity, holdcount, holdtime), and panel (c) using data from the spatial kinematic features (i.e., submovements, max size). In both plots, the x‐ and y‐axes represent the two components of the dimensionality reduction. Dark points show the ASC group, while gray points show the NT group. Circles indicate the boundaries of group classification. ASC, autism spectrum conditions; NT, neurotypical
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Gesture recognition accuracy per group, as affected by observed kinematics (submovements). Submovements are given on the x‐axis as a z‐score, while accuracy is given on the y‐axis, in percentage. The blue line represents neurotypicals, while the red line represents autistic individuals. The light bar behind each line depicts the standard error of the regression line
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Response times per group as a function of kinematic features. In each plot, the kinematic feature is given on the x‐axis, while response time is given on the y‐axis, in seconds. The blue line represents neurotypicals, while the red line represents autistic individuals. The light bar behind each line depicts the standard error of the regression line. Panel (a) depicts response time by submovements, panel (b) depicts response time by vertical amplitude, and panel (c) depicts response time by peak velocity
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