Neurotypical individuals fail to understand action vitality form in children with autism spectrum disorder
Luca Casartelli, Alessandra Federici, Lucia Fumagalli, Ambra Cesareo, Monica Nicoli, Luca Ronconi, Andrea Vitale, Massimo Molteni, Giacomo Rizzolatti, Corrado Sinigaglia
Abstract
(2010)]. Previously we demonstrated that, although ASD and typically developing (TD) children alike differentiate vitality forms when performing actions, ASD children express them in a way that is motorically dissimilar to TD children. To assess whether this motor dissimilarity may have consequences for vitality form recognition, we asked neurotypical participants to identify the vitality form of different types of action performed by ASD or TD children. We found that participants exhibited remarkable inaccuracy in identifying ASD children's vitality forms. Interestingly, their performance did not benefit from information feedback. This indicates that how people act matters for understanding others and for being understood by them. Because vitality forms pervade every aspect of daily life, our findings promise to open the way to a deeper comprehension of the bidirectional difficulties for both ASD and neurotypical individuals in interacting with one another.