Making the Choice: Style, Path, or Goal? Imitation in Autism Spectrum Disorders

Background:  

Imitation is a primary way in which young children learn language and social interaction (Kuhl, 2007; Meltzoff, 2007). While most clinicians would agree that there is something different about the way in which children with ASD imitate, it has been difficult to capture this difference in research. While imitation of actions on objects has generally been found to be less impaired, the “style” in which an action is performed is impaired in individuals with ASD (Hobson & Hobson, 2008).

Objectives:  

Rather than focus on whether children with ASD can imitate, this study focused on how children with ASD imitate. When forced to choose between imitating a person’s goal or the path taken to accomplish the goal, typical toddlers choose to imitate path (Wagner, Yocum, & Greene-Havas, 2008). The present study asked whether children with ASD imitate style and whether they prefer goal or path when exact imitation is precluded. 

Methods:  

Participants included 25 young children with ASD (chronological age: mean = 43 moths; range 25-68 months) and two groups of children with typical development (29 matched on chronological age, mean = 43 months; 28 matched on receptive language ability, mean = 37 months). Children completed an imitation choice task in which the component parts of an action with an object were examined. The components included a “style” or type of movement (i.e., hopping, sliding), a “path” or direction of motion (i.e., up, down), and a “goal” toward which the motion is directed (i.e., on a cup, in a cup). Children had the opportunity to imitate exactly what they had seen the examiner do with their toy in one condition. In the second condition, exact imitation was precluded to examine children’s preferences in which components they chose to preserve when imitating.

Results:  

Across both the exact and choice conditions, children with typical development showed more imitation of style than did the children with ASD (F = 18.67, p < .001). In the exact imitation condition, children with ASD showed equally high rates of path and goal imitation compared to both groups of children with typical development. However, when forced to choose between imitating goal or path, children with typical development chose to imitate path (M = .43; positive value indicates path preference) while children with ASD did not show this preference (M = -.13; value near zero indicates no preference) (F = 24.38, p < .001).

Conclusions:  

Results suggest that the components that children with ASD choose to imitate differ from those that children with typical development prefer. These results may help explain some of the discrepant findings previously reported in the imitation literature. Specifically, children with ASD “do” imitate, but “how” they imitate is different. This may have important implications for refining measures to assess imitation abilities in a more detailed manner. Additionally, these results have implications for designing and implementing interventions that address imitation or use imitation to teach other skills as merely teaching imitation of a behavioral goal does not capture the true nature of imitation.