HOW a new action feels is more important than how it looks for children with autism. This could be why they find imitation tough.
and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, trained children with and without autism to 鈥渃atch鈥� a virtual animal using a cursor controlled by a robotic arm. The arm resisted movement in certain directions, and the kids learned to use the required extra force. The researchers then switched off the resistance and asked the children to reach for two new targets. One required them to make the cursor move in the same direction as in the training task, while the second required the same action as the training task but produced different cursor motion.
Those without autism applied compensatory force in both cases, indicating that they expected the resistance to be there. But the children with autism only applied the extra force to the second new target. Shadmehr concludes that they focus on the sensation rather than visual consequences of an action and so likened only the second new task to the training task (Nature Neuroscience, ).
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