Mirror me: Imitative responses in adults with autism.
Adults with autism copy fine until the next move clashes with the last one—then they slow down.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Schunke et al. (2016) asked adults with autism and neurotypical adults to copy hand movements on a screen. Sometimes the next movement clashed with the one before. The team measured how fast and how accurately each group copied the moves.
What they found
Adults with autism were slower when the two moves conflicted. Their brains still treated human hand pictures as special, but switching quickly between opposite moves was hard. Neurotypical adults showed no such slowdown.
How this fits with other research
Sowden et al. (2016) ran a nearly identical lab task and saw no speed loss in adults with autism. The difference: Sophie used only matching moves, while Odette stacked conflicting moves back-to-back. The clash, not the copy itself, is the tricky part.
La Malfa et al. (2004) reviewed earlier work and found children with autism struggle with imitation because their sensory-motor maps are off. Odette shows the same map weakness can linger into adulthood when extra control is needed.
Girardi et al. (2021) also saw slower, missed responses in adults with autism when timing broke their expectations. Together these studies flag a broader rule: adults with autism can copy fine until the task adds surprise or conflict.
Why it matters
If you run social-skills or motor groups, keep instructions single-step and give warning cues before you switch actions. Drill quick rule changes in a safe setting so clients practice shifting without lag. Targeting this flexible control may speed up everyday imitation and social back-and-forth.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Before changing the action in an imitation game, give a three-second verbal cue like “New move coming” and demonstrate once slowly.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Dysfunctions of the human mirror neuron system have been postulated to underlie some deficits in autism spectrum disorders including poor imitative performance and impaired social skills. Using three reaction time experiments addressing mirror neuron system functions under simple and complex conditions, we examined 20 adult autism spectrum disorder participants and 20 healthy controls matched for age, gender and education. Participants performed simple finger-lifting movements in response to (1) biological finger and non-biological dot movement stimuli, (2) acoustic stimuli and (3) combined visual-acoustic stimuli with different contextual (compatible/incompatible) and temporal (simultaneous/asynchronous) relation. Mixed model analyses revealed slower reaction times in autism spectrum disorder. Both groups responded faster to biological compared to non-biological stimuli (Experiment 1) implying intact processing advantage for biological stimuli in autism spectrum disorder. In Experiment 3, both groups had similar 'interference effects' when stimuli were presented simultaneously. However, autism spectrum disorder participants had abnormally slow responses particularly when incompatible stimuli were presented consecutively. Our results suggest imitative control deficits rather than global imitative system impairments.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2016 · doi:10.1177/1362361315571757