Dyspraxia in ASD: Impaired coordination of movement elements.
Danielle McAuliffe, Ajay S Pillai, Alyssa Tiedemann and 2 others
PMID 27653620WHAT IT FOUND
Children with ASD were less accurate copying gestures.
The difference was largest when the gesture required several movement parts to happen at once.
Key findings
01Children with ASD were less accurate at imitating meaningless gestures than typically developing controls.
02The accuracy drop for simultaneous gestures, compared with serial gestures, was greater in the ASD group than in controls.
03Controls were more accurate than children with ASD on both serial and simultaneous gestures, and the group difference was larger for simultaneous gestures.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The paper states that 25 controls were analysed, but it does not state the total number of children with ASD, so the ASD group size is unclear. The videos came from earlier studies, and the ASD group had lower full-scale IQ than controls; the main result was not adjusted for full-scale IQ in the text. Scoring relied mainly on one research assistant, and a second rater checked only 24% of subjects. The gestures were meaningless laboratory imitation tasks, not functional daily activities, and the scoring rubric was developed by the study team. Some children with ASD had ADHD or anxiety, and ADHD features were not characterised in the current analysis. The study measured copied gestures only; it did not test whether this finding explains everyday coordination, social communication, or response to therapy.
Declared interests
No funding source is stated in the supplied text. The authors declared no relevant conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that this proves a treatment for dyspraxia or that all children with autism have a general motor deficit. The study compared groups on copied meaningless gestures and did not test intervention or everyday function.