Asperger's Syndrome Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Asperger's Syndrome, including details on symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, medication.

Brief Report: Imitation of Meaningless Gestures in Individuals with Asperger Syndrome and High-functioning Autism.

Stieglitz Ham H, Corley M, Rajendran G, Carletta J, Swanson S

Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, 7 George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9JZ, UK, heidi.ham@ed.ac.uk.

Nineteen people with Asperger syndrome (AS)/High-Functioning Autism (HFA) (ages 7-15) were tested on imitation of two types of meaningless gesture: hand postures and finger positions. The individuals with AS/HFA achieved lower scores in the imitation of both hand and finger positions relative to a matched neurotypical group. The between-group difference was primarily accounted for by performance on a test of visual motor integration, together with a hand imitation deficit which was specifically due to errors in body part orientation. Our findings implicate both visuomotor processes (Damasio and Maurer, 1978) and self-other mapping (Rogers and Pennington, 1991) in ASD imitation deficits. Following Goldenberg (1999), we propose that difficulties with body part orientation may underlie problems in meaningless gesture imitation.

Published 26 February 2008 in J Autism Dev Disord, 38(3): 569-73.
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