Michelle Dawson posts
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Matthew F. Moran, John T. Foley, Mary E. Parker, Michael J. Weiss (2013). Two-legged hopping in autism spectrum disorders. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 7, 14-14. Frontiers Media SA.
Abstract
Sensory processing deficits are common within autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Deficits have a heterogeneous dispersion across the spectrum and multimodal processing tasks are thought to magnify integration difficulties. Two-legged hopping in place in sync with an auditory cue (2.3, 3.0 Hz) was studied in a group of six individuals with expressive language impaired ASD (ELI-ASD) and an age-matched control group. Vertical ground reaction force data were collected and discrete Fourier transforms were utilized to determine dominant hopping cadence. Effective leg stiffness was computed through a mass-spring model representation. The ELI-ASD group were unsuccessful in matching their hopping cadence (2.21 ± 0.30 hops·s(-1), 2.35 ± 0.41 hops·s(-1)) to either auditory cue with greater deviations at the 3.0 Hz cue. In contrast, the control group was able to match hopping cadence (2.35 ± 0.06 hops·s(-1), 3.02 ± 0.10 hops·s(-1)) to either cue via an adjustment of effective leg stiffness. The ELI-ASD group demonstrated a varied response with an interquartile range (IQR) in excess of 0.5 hops·s(-1) as compared to the control group with an IQR < 0.03 hops·s(-1). Several sensorimotor mechanisms could explain the inability of participants with ELI-ASD to modulate motor output to match an external auditory cue. These results suggest that a multimodal gross motor task can (1) discriminate performance among a group of individuals with severe autism, and (2) could be a useful quantitative tool for evaluating motor performance in individuals with ASD individuals.
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