Different strategy between normal and ASD subjects during imitation of other's movement

Abstract

This study attempted to investigate a different strategy between normal and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) subjects during imitation of movement that other person’s finger of either right or left hand tapped a key. The subjective reports have shown that many ASD subjects used a strategy of perspective taking, whereas many normal subjects used that of mental rotation. The selection of either strategy is correlated with scales of ASD. Moreover, the ASD subjects’ performance was degraded when they were asked to use the different strategy, unlike the normal subjects. Future study should aim to identify the neural mechanism which causes the different strategy between the ASD and normal subjects, by using EEG and NIRS analyses.