Cogn Neuropsychol. 1998 Sep 1;15(6-8):747-70. doi: 10.1080/026432998381087.
This study investigated the ability of children and adolescents with autism to imitate nonsymbolic manual postures and sequences. The controls were children with receptive language delays (matched to the autistic group for age and language level), and typically developing children (matched for language level). Control tasks assessed gesture memory and manual dexterity. Imitation tasks were videotaped for blind scoring of overall accuracy and specific errors. Children with autism performed relatively poorly on posture imitation, but not imitation of simple posture sequences. Reduced manual dexterity contributed to, but did not entirely account for the autistic im itative deficit. An error that was significantly more common in the autistic group suggests that their difficulty in assuming another's perspective may be apparent at the level of simple actions.
本研究调查了自闭症儿童和青少年模仿非符号性手势和序列的能力。对照组为有接受性语言延迟的儿童（与自闭症组在年龄和语言水平上相匹配）和发育正常的儿童（在语言水平上相匹配）。控制任务评估了手势记忆和手部灵巧度。模仿任务被录像，以便对整体准确性和特定错误进行盲评。自闭症儿童在姿势模仿方面表现相对较差，但在简单姿势序列的模仿方面没有问题。手部灵巧度的降低是导致自闭症模仿缺陷的原因之一，但并非完全解释。自闭症组中一种明显更为常见的错误表明，他们在假设他人视角方面的困难可能在简单动作层面上就表现出来了。
