Children with autism respond differently to spontaneous, elicited and deferred imitation.
Autism mainly hurts asked-for gesture imitation, not copying in general, so pick the right imitation format for your lesson.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Eussen et al. (2016) watched how kids with autism copy others. They compared three kinds of copying: doing it right away when asked, doing it on their own, and doing it later from memory. They also included kids with Down syndrome and typical kids to see the differences.
What they found
Kids with autism were weaker at copying gestures when asked, but copied objects and body movements about the same as the other groups. They also copied fine on their own and remembered actions later about as well as kids with Down syndrome.
How this fits with other research
Hermans et al. (2011) saw the same gesture gap, so the weakness looks real. Whitehouse et al. (2014) seems to disagree — they found no autism gap at all. The twist: they used object tasks, not gestures. The two studies actually match once you split gestures from objects.
Gonsiorowski et al. (2016) adds that toddlers who later get an autism label already look away from demos. Less looking may feed the later gesture gap, so catching attention early could help.
Why it matters
Check which kind of imitation you need before you teach. If your program leans on gestures — like sign language or social games — expect slower progress and give extra models. Use objects or visual cues to hold attention, and keep prerequisite steps the same each time. When you see poor gesture copying, do not assume the child cannot imitate at all; switch to object-based or spontaneous formats and you may get better response right away.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Imitation, a key vehicle for both cognitive and social development, is often regarded as more difficult for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) than for children with Down syndrome (DS) or typically developing (TD) children. The current study investigates similarities and differences in observed elicited, spontaneous and deferred imitation using both actions with objects and gestures as imitation tasks in these groups. METHODS: Imitation among 19 children with autism was compared with 20 children with DS and 23 TD children matched for mental and language age. RESULTS: Elicited imitation resulted in significantly lower scores for the ASD group compared with the other two groups, an effect mainly carried by a low level of gesture imitation among ASD children. We observed no differences among the groups for spontaneous imitation. However, children with ASD or DS displayed less deferred imitation than the TD group. Proneness to imitate also differed among groups: only 10 (53%) of the children with autism responded in the elicited imitation condition compared with all children with DS and almost all TD children (87%). CONCLUSIONS: These findings add to our understanding of the kind of imitation difficulties children with ASD might have. They also point to the necessity of not equating various imitation measures because these may capture different processes and be differently motivating for children with autism.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2016 · doi:10.1111/jir.12272