Not So Automatic Imitation: Expectation of Incongruence Reduces Interference in Both Autism Spectrum Disorder and Typical Development.
Andrew Gordon, Raphael Geddert, Jeremy Hogeveen and 3 others
PMID 31902056WHAT IT FOUND
No evidence of a specific imitation deficit in autism.
The autism group had more overall disruption, but both groups reduced it when most trials made a non-matching hand action likely.
Key findings
01Seeing an action that did not match the required finger lift interfered with responses, but the interference was not specific to people with autism.
02When most trials made a non-matching hand action likely, both groups reduced that interference.
03In the autism group, higher social-affect severity was related to less interference, but a similar relationship appeared for non-imitative trials.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
Only participants with an estimated general intelligence score of at least 70 were included, so the results do not speak to autistic people with intellectual disability. The sample was mostly adolescent, and prior similar work used adults typically aged 30 to 40 years, so age may change the pattern. The hand images were rotated 90 degrees to avoid simple spatial matching, which may have introduced orthogonal spatial compatibility effects. There was no block with equal numbers of matching and opposite trials, so the effect of expectation cannot be compared with a neutral 50/50 context. The IQ-matched reanalysis was placed in supplementary materials and removed the most impaired autism participants, so it may not settle the severity findings. The finding that reaction time did not differ between imitation and non-imitative trials may reflect limited power rather than true equivalence.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflict of interest. Participants received financial remuneration.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that autism has no imitation difficulties. This study tested a simple finger-lift task with irrelevant hand images, not voluntary imitation, social communication, or therapy performance.