Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) consists of altered performance of a range of skills, including social/communicative and motor skills. It is unclear whether this altered performance results from atypical acquisition or learning of the skills or from atypical “online” performance of the skills. Atypicalities of skilled actions that require both motor and cognitive resources, such as abnormal gesturing, are highly prevalent in ASD and are easier to study in a laboratory context than are social/communicative skills. Imitation has long been known to be impaired in ASD; because learning via imitation is a prime method by which humans acquire skills, we tested the hypothesis that children with ASD show alterations in learning novel gestures via imitation. Eighteen participants with ASD and IQ > 80, ages 8–12.9 years, and 19 typically developing peers performed a task in which they watched a video of a model performing a novel, meaningless arm/hand gesture and copied the gesture. Each gesture video/copy sequence was repeated 4–6 times. Eight gestures were analyzed. Examination of learning trajectories revealed that while children with ASD made nearly as much progress in learning from repetition 1 to repetition 4, the shape of the learning curves differed. Causal modeling demonstrated the shape of the learning curve influenced both the performance of overlearned gestures and autism severity, suggesting that it is in the index of learning mechanisms relevant both to motor skills and to autism core features. Autism Res 2020, 13: 777–784.. © 2019 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

中文翻译：

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在 ASD 中通过模仿来学习熟练的动作。

自闭症谱系障碍 (ASD) 包括一系列技能的改变表现，包括社交/交流和运动技能。目前尚不清楚这种改变的性能是否是由非典型采集引起的或学习技能或从非典型的“在线”技能表现中学习。需要运动和认知资源的技能动作的非典型性，例如异常手势，在 ASD 中非常普遍，并且在实验室环境中比社交/交流技能更容易研究。长期以来，人们都知道模仿会在 ASD 中受损。因为通过模仿学习是人类获得技能的主要方法，我们检验了 ASD 儿童在通过模仿学习新手势方面表现出改变的假设。18 名 ASD 和 IQ > 80、年龄 8-12.9 岁的参与者和 19 名正常发育的同龄人执行了一项任务，他们观看了一个模特表演新奇、无意义的手臂/手势手势的视频并复制了该手势。每个手势视频/复制序列重复 4-6 次。分析了八个手势。对学习轨迹的检查表明，虽然自闭症儿童在从重复 1 到重复 4 的学习中取得了几乎相同的进步，但学习曲线的形状不同。因果模型表明学习曲线的形状影响过度学习手势的表现和自闭症的严重程度，这表明它是与运动技能和自闭症核心特征相关的学习机制的指数。Autism Res 2020, 13: 777–784 .. © 2019 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.