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Failure in Pantomime Action Execution Correlates with the Severity of Social Behavior Deficits in Children with Autism: A Praxis Study

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Abstract

Here we describe the performance of children with autism, their siblings, and typically developing children using the Florida Apraxia Battery. Children with autism showed the lowest performance in all sections of the test. They were mostly impaired in pantomime actions execution on imitation and on verbal command, and in imitation of meaningless gestures. Interestingly, a correlation was found between performance in pantomime actions and the severity of social behavior deficits. We conclude that the presence of a rigid internal model prevents the execution of an exact copy of the observed pantomime actions and that the deficit in imitation of meaningless gestures is most likely due to a deficit in the mechanisms responsible for visuomotor transformations.

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Acknowledgments

The work was supported by the ERC Project No. 250013 funded to GR. The authors would like to thank Dr. Costanza Carmi for the English correction.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Università di Parma, Parma, Italy

    Valentina Gizzonio, Pietro Avanzini, Cristina Campi, Sonia Orivoli, Carlo Alberto Tassinari & Giacomo Rizzolatti

  2. CNR-SPIN, Genoa, Italy

    Cristina Campi

  3. Child Neuropsychiatry Unit, Department of Neuroscience, University Hospital of Parma, Parma, Italy

    Benedetta Piccolo

  4. Child Neuropsychiatry, Department of Life and Reproduction Sciences, University of Verona, Verona, Italy

    Gaetano Cantalupo

  5. University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Carlo Alberto Tassinari

  6. Brain Center for Social and Motor Cognition, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, via Volturno 39/E, 43125, Parma, Italy

    Giacomo Rizzolatti & Maddalena Fabbri-Destro

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  1. Valentina Gizzonio
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  9. Maddalena Fabbri-Destro
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Correspondence to Maddalena Fabbri-Destro.

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Gizzonio, V., Avanzini, P., Campi, C. et al. Failure in Pantomime Action Execution Correlates with the Severity of Social Behavior Deficits in Children with Autism: A Praxis Study. J Autism Dev Disord 45, 3085–3097 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-015-2461-2

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