Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder with a behavioral phenotype characterized by impaired development of social-communicative skills and excessive repetitive and stereotyped behaviors. Despite high phenotypic heterogeneity in ASD, a meaningful subpopulation of children with ASD (∼90%) show significant general motor impairment. More focused studies on the nature of motor impairment in ASD reveal that children with ASD are particularly impaired on tasks such as ball catching and motor imitation that require efficient visual-motor integration (VMI). Motor computational approaches also provide evidence for VMI impairment showing that children with ASD form internal sensorimotor representations that bias proprioceptive over visual feedback. Impaired integration of visual information to form internal representations of others’ and the external world may explain observed impairments on VMI tasks and motor imitation of others. Motor imitation is crucial for acquiring both social and motor skills, and impaired imitation skill may contribute to the observed core behavioral phenotype of ASD. The current review examines evidence supporting VMI impairment as a core feature of ASD that may contribute to both impaired motor imitation and social-communicative skill development. We propose that understanding the neurobiological mechanisms underlying VMI impairment in ASD may be key to discovery of therapeutics to address disability in children and adults with ASD.

自闭症谱系障碍 (ASD) 是一种神经发育障碍，其行为表型的特征是社交沟通技能发育受损以及过度重复和刻板行为。尽管自闭症谱系障碍的表型异质性很高，但自闭症谱系障碍儿童的一个有意义的亚群（~90%）表现出显着的一般运动障碍。对 ASD 运动障碍性质的更集中的研究表明，患有 ASD 的儿童在接球和运动模仿等需要高效视觉运动整合 (VMI) 的任务上尤其受到损害。运动计算方法还为 VMI 损伤提供了证据，表明患有自闭症谱系障碍 (ASD) 的儿童会形成内部感觉运动表征，使本体感受优于视觉反馈。形成他人和外部世界的内部表征的视觉信息整合受损可能可以解释在 VMI 任务和他人运动模仿中观察到的损伤。运动模仿对于获得社交和运动技能至关重要，模仿技能受损可能有助于观察到自闭症谱系障碍的核心行为表型。当前的综述审查了支持 VMI 损伤作为 ASD 核心特征的证据，这可能会导致运动模仿和社交沟通技能发展受损。我们认为，了解 ASD 中 VMI 损伤背后的神经生物学机制可能是发现解决 ASD 儿童和成人残疾问题的治疗方法的关键。