Title: Autistic children show spared imitation of communicative symbolic and object-related gestures
Abstract: Event Abstract Back to Event Autistic children show spared imitation of communicative symbolic and object-related gestures Joana C. Carmo1* and Raffaella I. Rumiati1 1 SISSA - International school for advanced studies, Italy Imitation is classically thought as a learning mechanism. In studies of autism, specific deficits of this human competence have been described. However whether this deficit is restricted to a certain type of gesturing is still under debate. For example, Williams et al. [1] claim that the deficit is confined to imitative skills of meaningless actions, while others found that both healthy and autistic children share the same tendency to imitate action’s goals [2]. In the present study we asked high functioning autistic children and age-matched typical children to imitate lists of several types of gesturing. These actions were either already known to the subjects or novel, meaningless actions. From those that could be retrieved from memory, they were either symbolic communicative or object-related, goal explicit actions. Importantly, an interaction effect between meaning x group was found, with a superior performance of meaningless actions by the control children. More, imitative performance of object-related actions and symbolic gesturing did not differ by any of the groups. These results are analyzed in light of a general dual route model for action imitation (e.g. Rumiati & Tessari, 2004), where imitative skills can be selective disrupted. Together, performance on two tasks of mental rotation was assessed and compared with the quality of imitation of meaningless and meaningful actions. References 1. Williams et al. 2004. J Autism Dev Disord 34,285-299.2. Hamilton et al. 2007. Neuropsychologia 45,1859-1868. Conference: 41st European Brain and Behaviour Society Meeting, Rhodes Island, Greece, 13 Sep - 18 Sep, 2009. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Poster presentations Citation: Carmo JC and Rumiati RI (2009). Autistic children show spared imitation of communicative symbolic and object-related gestures. Conference Abstract: 41st European Brain and Behaviour Society Meeting. doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.08.2009.09.105 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 08 Jun 2009; Published Online: 08 Jun 2009. * Correspondence: Joana C Carmo, SISSA - International school for advanced studies, Trieste, Italy, [email protected] Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Joana C Carmo Raffaella I Rumiati Google Joana C Carmo Raffaella I Rumiati Google Scholar Joana C Carmo Raffaella I Rumiati PubMed Joana C Carmo Raffaella I Rumiati Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.