Atypical development of sequential manual motor planning and visuomotor integration in children with autism at early school-age: A longitudinal kinematic study.
Anna Bäckström, Anna-Maria Johansson, Thomas Rudolfsson and 4 others
PMID 39760319WHAT IT FOUND
Children with autism showed less benefit from seeing the goal in advance.
Their motor planning relied more on feedback than prediction. This atypical visuomotor integration became more pronounced as they aged from 7 to 10 years.
Key findings
01Children with autism showed smaller improvements in motor planning when they could see the goal in advance compared to typically developing peers.
02Children with autism exhibited atypical chaining of sequential movements, failing to adjust velocity based on task difficulty when visual information was available.
03Both groups improved in motor efficiency over time, but the autism group showed persistent differences in residual angle and fitting duration, particularly in complex orientations.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample size was small, which limits the generalizability of the findings. The study included children with a range of cognitive abilities, and the impact of intellectual disability was not fully controlled for, although all participants had a formal ASD diagnosis. The findings are specific to early school-age children and may not apply to other developmental stages. The task was a controlled laboratory setting, which may not fully reflect real-world motor planning demands.
Declared interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest. The study was supported by grants from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation and the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that providing more visual information will automatically improve motor planning for children with autism. The study found that children with autism benefited less from seeing the goal in advance, suggesting that their motor planning relies more on feedback than prediction.