A quarterly publication of the Autism Research Institute
Winter, 2019 | Number 1, Volume 33
Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) show very early evidence of impaired motor skills, according to a new study.
Lori-Ann Sacrey and colleagues analyzed data from three groups of children, all recruited into a longitudinal study when they were between 6 and 12 months of age and followed through the age of 36 months. Ten of the children were “high-risk” children (because they had an older sibling with ASD) who later received an autism diagnosis themselves. Ten were high-risk children who did not later receive an ASD diagnosis, and 10 were neurotypical controls.
The researchers used videos of the children to evaluate their reach-to-grasp movement at 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 24, and 36 months of age. This movement, they say, is a good indicator of how skilled hand movement and its sensory control are developing. The reach-to-grasp movement involves five components:
• Orienting (moving the head and eyes to fixate visually on an object and disengaging visually once the object is grasped).
• Lifting (raising a hand, repositioning it, and semi-flexing the fingers).
• Advancing (moving the hand toward the object and stopping above it).
• Pronating (rotating the hand and shaping the fingers in order to grasp the object).
• Grasping the object.
The researchers report that children later diagnosed with ASD had poorer total scores on the reach-to-grasp movement, as well as poorer scores on the orienting, lifting, and pronating components of the movement, compared to children in the other two groups.
They conclude, “Our results support the growing literature indicating that children who are later diagnosed with ASD show impaired early motor performance.” Monitoring of children at elevated risk for ASD, they say, should include screening them for motor and sensory issues.
“The reach-to-grasp movement in infants later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder: a high risk sibling cohort study,” Lori-Ann R. Sacrey, Lonnie Zwaigenbaum, Susan Bryson, Jessica Brian, and Isabel M. Smith, Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders, December 2018 (free online). Address: Lori-Ann Sacrey, [email protected].
