Grasping motor impairments in autism: not action planning but movement execution is deficient.

The team asked kids and teens with autism to pick up and place small toys.

They filmed the reach and compared each move to kids of the same age without autism.

The goal was to see if the autism group planned the action wrong or simply carried it out slowly.

The autistic group planned the reach just as well as peers.

Their hand path, grip size, and timing choices looked normal.

The delay showed up only while the hand was moving; the actual lift and carry took longer.

Sparaci et al. (2015) saw odd movement paths and called it a planning issue.

The two papers seem to clash, but they measured different things: path shape versus movement speed.

Izadi-Najafabadi et al. (2015) later showed that kids with autism learn new sequences fine if you let them watch and copy; explicit verbal rules trip them up.

Sharp et al. (2010) had already found that hidden motor sequence learning stays intact, backing the idea that basic learning circuits work.

If the child knows what to do but moves slowly, skip long verbal explanations.

Give extra time for the motion itself and use physical prompts or video models.

Build practice around repeated full-speed reps instead of re-teaching the plan.