Clumsiness in autism and Asperger syndrome: a further report.
Motor clumsiness is common across all PDD types and can improve with practice, so treat it as a teachable skill, not a diagnostic divider.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Wilkinson et al. (1998) watched the kids do motor tasks.
They compared three groups: autism, Asperger, and PDD-NOS.
All kids took the same movement tests and an IQ test.
What they found
Every group looked clumsy on the tests.
At first the Asperger kids seemed less clumsy, but that edge vanished once IQ was counted.
Clumsiness is part of all PDD types, not a special mark of Asperger.
How this fits with other research
Sutera et al. (2007) later showed that young learners with better early motor skills often lose their ASD label by age 4.
This moves clumsiness from a fixed trait to a possible growth area.
Matson (2007) found that teens with Down syndrome quickly improved finger force control after three days of varied practice.
Together these studies say clumsiness in any diagnosis can change with training, not a life sentence.
Why it matters
Stop using clumsiness to split Asperger from autism; the difference fades when IQ is held steady.
Do add motor goals to every ASD plan, because skills can grow and may even predict better long-term outcome.
Track small gains the way you track language or social targets.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Clumsiness has been proposed as a diagnostic feature of Asperger syndrome (AS), a type of pervasive developmental disorder recently introduced in the ICD-10 and DSM-IV. However, the extent to which this symptom is specific to AS is not clear. To investigate this issue, we compared a sample of AS children with age- and sex-matched groups of children with autistic disorder and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (PDDNOS). Twelve subjects with AS (ICD-10/DSM-IV; 11 males; average age 11.4 years; mean full-scale IQ 104.9) were compared with 12 subjects with autistic disorder (DSM-III-R; II males; average age 10.3 years; mean full-scale IQ 78.4) and 12 subjects with PDDNOS (DSM-III-R; 10 males; average age 10.1 years; mean full-scale IQ 78.2). The BruininksOseretsky test, a standardized test of motor coordination, was administered blind by the same investigator to all the three groups. While coordination deficits were found in all three groups, children with AS were found to be less impaired than those with autistic disorder and PDDNOS. However, no significant relationship was found between coordination scores and diagnosis after adjusting for the level of intelligence. These findings suggest that some patients with AS may be less clumsy than those with autistic disorder and that this difference may be the result of their higher level of intelligence. Studies based on larger samples using multiple measures of coordination are needed to further clarify the role of clumsiness in the classification of pervasive developmental disorders.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 1998 · doi:10.1046/j.1365-2788.1998.00065.x