Gesture imitation in autism I: Nonsymbolic postures and sequences

This study investigated the ability of children and adolescents with autism to imitate nonsymbolic manual postures and sequences. The controls were children with receptive language delays (matched to the autistic group for age and language level), and typically developing children (matched for language level). Control tasks assessed gesture memory and manual dexterity. Imitation tasks were videotaped for blind scoring of overall accuracy and specific errors. Children with autism performed relatively poorly on posture imitation, but not imitation of simple posture sequences. Reduced manual dexterity contributed to, but did not entirely account for the autistic imitative deficit. An error that was significantly more common in the autistic group suggests that their difficulty in assuming another's perspective may be apparent at the level of simple actions.