McAuliffe Danielle, Zhao Yi, Pillai Ajay S, Ament Katarina, Adamek Jack, Caffo Brian S, Mostofsky Stewart H, Ewen Joshua B
Department of Neurology and Developmental Medicine, Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, Maryland.
Department of Biostatistics, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland.
Autism Res. 2020 May;13(5):777-784. doi: 10.1002/aur.2253. Epub 2019 Dec 26.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) consists of altered performance of a range of skills, including social/communicative and motor skills. It is unclear whether this altered performance results from atypical acquisition or learning of the skills or from atypical "online" performance of the skills. Atypicalities of skilled actions that require both motor and cognitive resources, such as abnormal gesturing, are highly prevalent in ASD and are easier to study in a laboratory context than are social/communicative skills. Imitation has long been known to be impaired in ASD; because learning via imitation is a prime method by which humans acquire skills, we tested the hypothesis that children with ASD show alterations in learning novel gestures via imitation. Eighteen participants with ASD and IQ > 80, ages 8-12.9 years, and 19 typically developing peers performed a task in which they watched a video of a model performing a novel, meaningless arm/hand gesture and copied the gesture. Each gesture video/copy sequence was repeated 4-6 times. Eight gestures were analyzed. Examination of learning trajectories revealed that while children with ASD made nearly as much progress in learning from repetition 1 to repetition 4, the shape of the learning curves differed. Causal modeling demonstrated the shape of the learning curve influenced both the performance of overlearned gestures and autism severity, suggesting that it is in the index of learning mechanisms relevant both to motor skills and to autism core features. Autism Res 2020, 13: 777-784.. © 2019 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: Imitation is a route by which humans learn a wide range of skills, naturally and in therapies. Imitation is known to be altered in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but learning via imitation has not been rigorously examined. We found that the shape of the learning curve is altered in ASD, in a way that has a significant impact both on measures of autism severity and of other motor skills.
自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）表现为一系列技能的表现异常，包括社交/沟通技能和运动技能。目前尚不清楚这种表现异常是源于技能获取或学习的非典型性，还是源于技能的非典型“在线”表现。需要运动和认知资源的熟练动作的非典型性，如异常手势，在ASD中非常普遍，并且在实验室环境中比社交/沟通技能更容易研究。长期以来，人们已知ASD患者的模仿能力受损；由于通过模仿学习是人类获取技能的主要方式，我们检验了这样一个假设，即患有ASD的儿童在通过模仿学习新手势时会出现改变。18名年龄在8至12.9岁、智商>80的ASD参与者和19名发育正常的同龄人参与了一项任务，他们观看一个模型做出新颖、无意义的手臂/手部动作的视频，并模仿该动作。每个手势视频/模仿序列重复4至6次。分析了8种手势。对学习轨迹的检查表明，虽然患有ASD的儿童在从第1次重复到第4次重复的学习过程中取得的进步几乎相同，但学习曲线的形状有所不同。因果模型表明，学习曲线的形状既影响过度学习手势的表现，也影响自闭症的严重程度，这表明它与运动技能和自闭症核心特征相关的学习机制指标有关。《自闭症研究》2020年，第13卷：777 - 784页。©2019国际自闭症研究协会，威利期刊公司。内容摘要：模仿是人类自然地以及在治疗中学习各种技能的一种途径。已知自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）患者的模仿能力会发生改变，但通过模仿学习尚未得到严格研究。我们发现，ASD患者的学习曲线形状发生了改变，这种改变对自闭症严重程度和其他运动技能的测量都有重大影响。
