Interpersonal motor coordination during joint actions in children with and without autism spectrum disorder: The role of motor information

Background: Kinematics plays a key role in action prediction, imitation and joint action coordination. Despite people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show a failure to use kinematic cues during observation and imitation, there is a paucity of studies exploring the role of this dysfunction during joint actions in children with ASD. Aim: To evaluate the interpersonal motor coordination of children with ASD and typically developing (TD) children during a joint action task. Method: Twenty-two participants performed two cooperative tasks. In the first one (Clear End-Point), children were provided with a priori information on movement end-point. In the second one (Unclear End-Point), the end-point was unknown and children had to use kinematic cues to accomplish the shared goal. Results: We found no between-group differences in the first task, even if children with ASD displayed greater reaction time variability. In the second task, they showed less accurate and slower movements than TD children. Moreover, their movement features did not differ between the two tasks, whereas TD children showed reduced reaction time variability and number of errors in the second task. Conclusion: Children with ASD were impaired in joint action coordination when they had to rely only on kinematic information. They were not able to pay more attention to the kinematic cues in absence of a visual goal.