Motor and verbal perspective taking in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Changes in social interaction with people and tools

Preliminary Evidence That Motor Planning Is Slower and More Difficult for Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder During Motor Cooperation

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit impairment in helping someone else with a motor action, which may arise from impairment in selecting and preparing motor responses. Five children with ASD and five typically developing children performed a cooperative motor planning task that required them to reach for, lift, and hand an object (hammer or stick) to a researcher. The response, movement, and grasp time were measured. Children with ASD grasped the object longer on trials where they helped, indicating that the action was planned in sequence versus as a whole (i.e., prior to the onset of movement). The hammer object elicited a quicker response than the stick, suggesting the facilitation of planning by tools with inherent action properties. Finally, the increased helping of children with ASD was not mirrored by changes in the response, movement, or grasp time.

INTRApersonal Synchrony as Constituent of INTERpersonal Synchrony and Its Relevance for Autism Spectrum Disorder

INTERpersonal synchrony leads to increased empathy, rapport and understanding, enabling successful human-human interactions and reciprocal bonding. Research shows that individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) exhibit difficulties to INTERpersonally synchronize but underlying causes are yet unknown. In order to successfully synchronize with others, INTRApersonal synchronization of communicative signals appears to be a necessary prerequisite. We understand INTRApersonal synchrony as an implicit factor of INTERpersonal synchrony and therefore hypothesize that atypicalities of INTRApersonal synchrony may add to INTERpersonal synchrony problems in ASD and their interaction partners. In this perspective article, we first review evidence for INTERpersonal dissynchrony in ASD, with respect to different approaches and assessment methods. Second, we draft a theoretical conceptualization of INTRApersonal dissynchrony in ASD based on a temporal model of human interaction. We will outline literature indicating INTRApersonal dissynchrony in ASD, therefore highlighting findings of atypical timing functions and findings from clinical and behavioral studies that indicate peculiar motion patterns and communicative signal production in ASD. Third, we hypothesize that findings from these domains suggest an assessment and investigation of temporal parameters of social behavior in individuals with ASD. We will further propose specific goals of empirical approaches on INTRApersonal dissynchrony. Finally we present implications of research on INTRApersonal timing in ASD for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes, what in our opinion warrants the increase of research efforts in this domain.