Abstract
This study explored the impacts of enactment and motor imagery on working memory for instructions in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), children with intellectual disability (ID) and typically developing (TD) children. The participants were asked to hear (hearing condition), imagine enacting (motor imagery condition) and actually enact (enactment condition) instruction sequences and then recall them orally. Compared with the hearing condition, all groups performed better in the enactment condition, with the greatest advantage exhibited by the TD group; however, only the TD children performed better in the motor imagery condition. In summary, enactment has a weaker facilitating effect on ASD children and ID children than on TD children, and motor imagery is ineffective in the former two groups.
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Data Availability
The data for the current study are available at https://osf.io/xuyjv.
Notes
The episodic buffer is a component of working memory that “binds” information from various working memory subsystems (i.e., the phonological loop and the visuospatial sketchpad) and related long-term semantic and linguistic knowledge activated by that information into a coherent whole (Baddeley, 2012). The central executive system is a component of working memory that regulates and allocates attention resources (Baddeley, 2012; Xie et al., 2021b).
Studies investigating the enactment effect also found a motor imagery advantage (e.g., Ma et al., 2021). However, these studies used this phenomenon to determine whether imagery processing plays a role in the enactment effect and thus to reveal the mechanism underlying this effect. Therefore, theories concerning the enactment effect serve enactment rather than motor imagery. In contrast to theories concerning the enactment effect, simulation theory serves motor imagery.
The SPM results are divided into superior intelligence (95%), good intelligence (75%), average intelligence (50%), lower-middle intelligence (10% and 25%) and mental deficiency (1% and 5%) levels (Zhang & Wang, 1989). Unlike the SPM, in the PPVT-R, intelligence is not divided into levels.
The CARS-CV score is the total score, and the cutoff point for ASD is 30. In our study, the CARS-CV scores were 30–36 for ASD children, 16–18 for ID children and 15 for TD children. The ABC-CV score is the total score, and the cutoff point for ASD is 31. In our study, the ABC-CV scores were 31–66 for ASD children, 1–4 for ID children and 0 for TD children.
Pearson correlation analyses were conducted for age and test scores in each condition for each group. For the ASD group, scores in each condition had a low correlation with age, rthe hearing condition = − .014, pthe hearing condition = .954; rthe enactment condition = − .104, pthe enactment condition = .662; rthe motor imagery condition = − .065, pthe imagery condition = .786. For the ID group, scores in each condition had a low correlation with age, rthe hearing condition = .217, pthe hearing condition = .358; rthe enactment condition = .341, pthe enactment condition = .141; rthe motor imagery condition = .222, pthe imagery condition = .347. For the TD group, scores in each condition had a low correlation with age, rthe hearing condition = .038, pthe hearing condition = .873; rthe enactment condition = − .009, pthe enactment condition = .971; rthe motor imagery condition = .290, pthe imagery condition = .215. Additionally, Pearson correlation analyses were conducted for age and the enactment effect (i.e., spanenactment–spanhearing) and for age and the motor imagery advantage (i.e., spanmotor imagery–spanhearing) in each group. For the ASD group, the enactment effect had a low correlation with age, r = − .095, p = .690; the motor imagery advantage also had a low correlation with age, r = − .091, p = .702. For the ID group, the enactment effect had a low correlation with age, r = .272, p = .245 and the motor imagery advantage had a low correlation with age, r = .102, p = .670. For the TD group, the enactment effect had a low correlation with age, r = − .044, p = .852 and the motor imagery advantage had a low correlation with age, r = .330, p = .156. Therefore, in each group recruited for our study, older children did not show better or worse performance in working memory for instructions compared to younger ones.
Since no previous studies compared the enactment effect between ID and TD children in the long-term memory framework, it is unclear whether the motor ability, receptive and expressive vocabulary skills, and episodic buffer functioning of ID children can meet the requirements of the enactment effect. These weaker abilities may be related to the difference between the ID and TD children.
The materials and procedures of the classical hand laterality task were the same as those in the study by Conson et al., except the key pressing of all participants was performed by an adult unaware of the purpose of the test to reduce experimental errors (some ASD and ID children often press the wrong button). The accuracy and response time of the participants were measured. However, since some ASD and TD children had pauses during the test, resulting in errors in response time, we only analyzed the results of accuracy.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to sincerely thank all of the participants who took part in this study. Without their support, this research would not have been possible. The authors would also like to sincerely thank several schools in Changchun city and Guilin city for their assistance with the study; Xinzhi Special Children School for Training (长春市二道区新智特殊儿童训练学校), Noah’s Star (长春市诺亚之星特殊教育学校), Xingguang Special Education School (长春市绿园区星光特殊教育学校), Yuzhi School (长春市南关区育智学校), Nanhu Primary School (长春市南湖小学), Mentality Cultivation School of Kuancheng District(长春市宽城区培智学校), Dongsi Primary School (长春市南关区东四小学) and Qingshan Middle School (桂林市荔浦市青山中学).
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This work was supported by the MOE Layout Foundation of Humanities and Social Sciences (Grant No. 18YJA190016).
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Tingting Xie is responsible for designing the experiment, performing the experiment, analyzing data and writing the paper. Huan Ma is responsible for performing the experiment and analyzing the data. Lijuan Wang coordinates the experiment and the paper. Yanfei Du is responsible for executing the experiment.
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Xie, T., Ma, H., Wang, L. et al. Can Enactment and Motor Imagery Improve Working Memory for Instructions in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Children with Intellectual Disability?. J Autism Dev Disord 54, 131–142 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-022-05780-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-022-05780-z