Preserved Imitation of Known Gestures in Children with High-Functioning Autism

It has been suggested that children with autism are particularly deficient at imitating novel gestures or gestures without goals. In the present study, we asked high-functioning autistic children and age-matched typically developing children to imitate several types of gestures that could be either already known or novel to them. Known gestures either conveyed a communicative meaning (i.e., intransitive) or involved the use of objects (i.e., transitive). We observed a significant interaction between gesture type and group of participants, with children with autism performing known gestures better than novel gestures. However, imitation of intransitive and transitive gestures did not differ across groups. These findings are discussed in light of a dual-route model for action imitation.

• Publication year

  2013

• Venue

  ISRN Neurology

• Publication date

  2013-08-25

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1155/2013/751516PMID 24062956PMCID 3767050
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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