Autistic Kids Can Imitate but Skip The “Silly”
Nadia Shanab | Uncategorized8 Apr 2013
One of the common traits of autism is the inability or having difficulty imitating people. Training children with autism to imitate or copy is very important from an early age. Many children with autism can learn this skill. Learning to imitate improves social skills and enhances communication and human interaction. But How do they imitate?
The Cell Press Journal Current Biology reported a great finding on April 8 (Today).
It was observed that children with autism skipped all the “silly” or the unnecessary action when trying to copy an adult. Typically developed children, on the other hand, copied everything whether it was necessary or not, whether it made sense or not.
This finding is very interesting, because to me it appears that kids with autism have an object-oriented mind. They copy only the actions that contribute to completing a task.
I guess if they are imitating an adult drawing a picture while whistling, they would imitate the drawing and omit the whistling.
The bright side of this behavior is that it reflects how much kids with autism can observe, copy, and complete a task, which is a wonderful achievement.
The down side, however, is the lack of the social aspect of the behavior.
Read the full article here:
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130408123144.htm
nadia shanab
Tags: autism, communication, parenting, research, symptoms of autism
