Standing Balance on Unsteady Surfaces in Children on the Autism Spectrum: The Effects of IQ.
Lower IQ means more wobble on uneven surfaces—check IQ before balance-heavy tasks.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers watched the kids stand on a wobble board. Half had autism, half did not.
They measured how much each child swayed. They also gave every child an IQ test.
What they found
Kids with autism wobbled more than kids without autism.
The lower the IQ score, the bigger the wobble. A child with an IQ of 70 swayed twice as much as a child with an IQ of 100.
How this fits with other research
Zalla et al. (2018) saw the same pattern in adults. They tracked eye jumps instead of balance. Both studies point to the cerebellum, the brain’s balance center.
van Timmeren et al. (2016) found that kids with autism ignore visual cues when learning motor skills. This helps explain why balance is worse when the surface is tricky.
Tyagi et al. (2019) linked poor sleep to motor problems in autism. Together, these papers show that motor issues in autism often travel with other challenges.
Why it matters
Before you ask a child with autism to ride a bike, climb stairs, or join a gym class, check their IQ score. If it is low, start on flat ground and give extra support.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Postural stability difficulties are commonly reported in people on the autism spectrum. However, it is unclear whether unsteady surfaces may exacerbate postural stability difficulties in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Understanding balance on unsteady surfaces is important because uneven surfaces are commonly encountered in daily life. METHODS: Twenty-one youth on the autism spectrum and 16 youth with typical development (ages 6-16 years, IQ ≥ 79) stood on both a fixed and unsteady (tiltable) platform, and center of pressure was measured. RESULTS: The group with ASD exhibited differentially more postural sway on the unsteady surface compared to the group with typical development. However, there was substantial variability within the ASD group. Follow-up analyses suggested that much of the variability in postural sway in the ASD group was accounted for by IQ. CONCLUSIONS: Clinically, these findings suggest that not all individuals with ASD struggle more with postural stability on unsteady surfaces. Instead children and adolescents with ASD and below-average IQ may have particular difficulty on unsteady surfaces and may require accommodations. Further, these findings lay the groundwork for future research to investigate the underlying mechanisms of poorer balance across the autism spectrum.
Research in autism spectrum disorders, 2018 · doi:10.1186/s11689-016-9178-1