Social vs Instrumental Motives Underlying Preschoolers’ Imitation – Insights from ASD, Williams Syndrome, and Typical Development

• In Event: 1-202 - Windows into early empathy and emotion regulation

Integrative Statement

Background. From infancy, children with ASD and those with WS present with overlapping difficulties in social cognition (including the ability to understand the goals of others’ actions) and motor functioning, as well as contrasting profiles in their motivation for social engagement, which is atypically low in ASD and atypically high in WS. Although imitation difficulties have been documented in both populations, it is not yet clear whether such abnormalities reflect differences of a social, cognitive and/or motor nature, and whether such difficulties involve both the social and instrumental dimensions of imitation. A fine-grained understanding of the social, attentional, motor and cognitive processes underlying imitation abnormalities in ASD and WS has the potential to advance knowledge on both the mechanisms of impairment and the social and cognitive processes underlying imitation in typical development.

Objectives. We investigated multiple processes underlying imitation in 35 preschoolers with ASD, 20 peers with Williams syndrome (WS), matched for age, cognitive, verbal and motor functioning, as well as 20 typically developing (TD) children matched for chronological age, with the aim to identify whether putative imitation differences between the groups were linked to the distinct social, cognitive and motor profiles characterizing the three groups.

Methods. We tested participants’ spontaneous propensity to imitate others and the accuracy of imitation performance in response to a series of novel eye-tracking-based imitation tasks, in which the following factors were manipulated 1) motor demands, 2) social engagement displayed by the model demonstrating the action, 3) the social versus instrumental nature of the to-be-imitated actions (e.g., imitating the actions needed to open a container and retrieve a toy versus imitating arbitrary actions during a clapping game), and 4) presence/absence of clear mean-goals structure.

Results. Children with WS and TD children increased their attention to the model and their propensity to imitate the demonstrated action in response to a socially engaging versus a neutral partner. In contrast, preschoolers with ASD showed a similarly reduced propensity to look at the model and to imitate her actions regardless to whether the model was socially engaging or neutral. We also found that TD children and those with WS imitated arbitrary actions serving a social purpose more frequently than those with ASD (Mann Whitney U = 290, p<.05). In contrast, the ASD and WS groups showed similar strengths in the instrumental aspects of imitation (e.g. understanding of the mean-goals articulation of the demonstrated actions) and a similar decrease in imitation accuracy as the motor complexity of the demonstrated actions increased. Imitation performance was correlated with the socialization subscale of the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales across the ASD and WS groups.

Conclusion: Patterns of syndrome-specific strengths and weaknesses in imitation performance of children with ASD and WS highlight the interplay of social, cognitive and motor factors underlying imitation in early development.

Author

• Giacomo Vivanti, Drexel Autism Institute, Drexel University
  Presenting Author