Perceiving goals and actions in individuals with autism spectrum disorders.
Toddlers with autism lock onto object location instead of the next goal unless you give clear motion cues.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers watched where toddlers looked while an adult moved toys.
Some toddlers had autism. Some were typically developing.
The team hid the adult’s hand to remove movement cues.
Then they tracked if kids looked at the old toy spot or the next goal.
What they found
Typical toddlers shifted their eyes to the next goal.
Toddlers with autism kept staring at the old spot.
Without hand motion, they stayed stuck on location.
How this fits with other research
Hou et al. (2023) saw the same gap in older kids.
They added questions about shared goals and still found ASD lag.
Boxum et al. (2018) seems to disagree.
Their older autistic kids predicted hidden motion just fine.
The gap likely shrinks with age or task type.
Schuwerk et al. (2016) add that autistic kids also miss action patterns.
Together the papers say: young kids with ASD need clear motion cues.
Why it matters
When you teach a new play step, show your hand and the object at the same time.
Fade the motion only after the child tracks the goal, not the spot.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
UNLABELLED: This study examined the predictive reasoning abilities of typically developing (TD) infants and 2-year-old children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in an eye-tracking paradigm. Participants watched a video of a goal-directed action in which a human actor reached for and grasped one of two objects. At test, the objects switched locations. Across these events, we measured: visual anticipation of the action outcome with kinematic cues (i.e., a completed reaching behavior); goal prediction of the action outcome without kinematic cues (i.e., an incomplete reach); and latencies to generate predictions across these two tasks. Results revealed similarities in action anticipation across groups when trajectory information regarding the intended goal was present; however, when predicting the goal without kinematic cues, developmental and diagnostic differences became evident. Younger TD children generated goal-based visual predictions, whereas older TD children were not systematic in their visual predictions. In contrast to both TD groups, children with ASD generated location-based predictions, suggesting that their visual predictions may reflect visuomotor perseveration. Together, these results suggest differences in early predictive reasoning abilities. Autism Res 2018, 11: 870-882. © 2018 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: The current study examines the ability to generate visual predictions regarding other people's goal-directed actions, specifically reaching and grasping an object, in infants and children with and without autism spectrum disorder. Results showed no differences in abilities when movement information about a person's goal was evident; however, differences were evident across age and clinical diagnoses when relying on previous knowledge to generate a visual prediction.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2013 · doi:10.1007/s10803-013-1784-0