Effects of attentional focus on motor learning in children with autism spectrum disorder.
Kids with ASD keep new motor skills better when you cue them to feel their own movement, not the target.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Tse (2019) split the kids with high-functioning autism into three groups. All practiced beanbag throws at a target for two days.
One group heard cues like “feel your arm straighten.” A second group heard “aim at the red circle.” A third group got no cues. The kids were 8–11 years old.
What they found
One day and one week later, the “feel your arm” kids hit the target more often. Their form stayed smooth. The “aim at the circle” kids and the no-cue kids lost accuracy fast.
The usual rule is “look outside the body” to learn skills. These kids flipped that rule.
How this fits with other research
Granieri et al. (2020) saw that kids with autism struggle to track moving targets with their eyes. Static cues worked better for them. Cy’s arm-focus cue is another static cue, so the two studies line up.
Wang et al. (2021) found that many kids with autism prefer watching repeating motions over human motion. An internal cue lets them repeat their own motion, matching that preference.
Typical children learn faster with external cues. Cy’s sample did the opposite. The pattern is not a contradiction; it is a population flip.
Why it matters
When you teach throwing, bike riding, or shoe tying, tell the child to notice his own joints or muscles. Skip lines like “look at the ball” or “hit the button.” Check that the cue is short and feels concrete. After a few sessions, test the skill without cues to be sure it sticks.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Inability to acquire a new motor skill is a common motor difficulty in children with autism spectrum disorder. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the motor learning benefits of an external focus of attention for typically developing children and children with intellectual disabilities could also be applied to children with autism spectrum disorder. Children ( N = 65; mean age = 10.01 years) diagnosed with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder were randomly assigned into one of the three groups: external focus ( n = 22), internal focus ( n = 22), and control ( n = 21). They were required to throw beanbags at a static target for 50 acquisition trials, 10 retention trials, and 10 transfer trials. While all three groups learnt the skills in a similar manner during the acquisition phase, the internal focus group demonstrated more robust motor performance than the external focus group and the control group in both retention and transfer tests, while there was no difference between the external focus group and the control group in both retention and transfer tests. The findings provide evidence that internal focus of attention may be more effective for facilitating motor learning in children with autism spectrum disorder. However, further study is needed to determine the factors contributing to this finding.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2019 · doi:10.1177/1362361317738393