Latrèche Kenza, Kojovic Nada, Pittet Irène, Natraj Shreyasvi, Franchini Martina, Smith Isabel M, Schaer Marie
Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, 1206, Geneva, Switzerland.
Fondation Pôle Autisme, 1204, Geneva, Switzerland.
J Autism Dev Disord. 2024 Oct 15. doi: 10.1007/s10803-024-06595-w.
Most studies in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) support a decrement in imitation performance. Factors related to visual attention and motor execution have been proposed to explain this phenomenon in ASD. However, studies investigated imitation with various methods, leading to inconsistent findings. Here, we examine imitation performance related to visual attention and motor execution. We focused on the imitation of meaningful and meaningless gestures, consistently reported as more affected than imitation of actions with objects in ASD. The imitation eye-tracking task consisted of a video of an actor demonstrating gestures and prompting children to imitate them. The demonstrations comprised meaningful and meaningless hand gestures, and meaningless facial gestures. We measured the fixation duration to the actor' face during child-directed speech and gesture demonstrations. We video-recorded children to assess their performance. Our sample comprised 100 participants (3.55 ± 1.11 years old), including 84 children with ASD. The ASD and typically developing groups displayed the same visual attention toward gesture demonstrations, although children with ASD spent less time looking at the face during facial stimuli. Visual exploration of actors' gestures did not influence imitation performance. Imitation of meaningful gestures was associated with less severe autistic symptoms, whereas imitation of meaningless gestures was correlated with higher non-verbal cognitive and fine-motor skills. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the complexity of imitation. We delineated the distinct nature of imitation of meaningful and meaningless gestures in children with ASD. We discuss clinical implications in relation to assessment and intervention programs.
大多数针对自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）儿童的研究都支持模仿能力下降这一观点。与视觉注意力和运动执行相关的因素已被提出用以解释ASD中的这一现象。然而，各项研究采用了不同的方法来调查模仿行为，导致研究结果并不一致。在此，我们研究了与视觉注意力和运动执行相关的模仿能力。我们重点关注有意义和无意义手势的模仿，一直以来都有报告称，在ASD中，这两种手势的模仿比使用物体的动作模仿受到的影响更大。模仿眼动追踪任务包括一段演员演示手势并促使儿童进行模仿的视频。演示内容包括有意义和无意义的手部手势以及无意义的面部手势。我们测量了在面向儿童的言语和手势演示过程中对演员面部的注视时长。我们对儿童进行录像以评估他们的表现。我们的样本包括100名参与者（年龄3.55 ± 1.11岁），其中有84名ASD儿童。尽管ASD儿童在面部刺激期间看脸的时间较少，但ASD组和发育正常组对手势演示的视觉注意力是相同的。对演员手势的视觉探索并未影响模仿表现。有意义手势的模仿与较轻的自闭症症状相关，而无意义手势的模仿则与较高的非语言认知和精细运动技能相关。这些发现有助于更好地理解模仿的复杂性。我们明确了ASD儿童中有意义和无意义手势模仿的不同性质。我们讨论了与评估和干预项目相关的临床意义。
