title: Intact and impaired mechanisms of action understanding in autism.
abstract: Typically developing children understand and predict others' behavior by extracting and processing relevant information such as the logic of their actions within the situational constraints and the intentions conveyed by their gaze direction and emotional expressions. Children with autism have difficulties understanding and predicting others' actions. With the use of eye tracking and behavioral measures, we investigated action understanding mechanisms used by 18 children with autism and a well-matched group of 18 typically developing children. Results showed that children with autism (a) consider situational constraints in order to understand the logic of an agent's action and (b) show typical usage of the agent's emotional expressions to infer his or her intentions. We found (c) subtle atypicalities in the way children with autism respond to an agent's direct gaze and (d) marked impairments in their ability to attend to and interpret referential cues such as a head turn for understanding an agent's intentions.
authors.affiliation: Olga Tennison Autism Research Centre, School of Psychological Science, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria, Australia. g.vivanti@latrobe.edu.au
authors.forename: Giacomo
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Vivanti
authors.forename: Carolyn
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: McCormick
authors.forename: Gregory S
authors.initials: GS
authors.lastname: Young
authors.forename: Floridette
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Abucayan
authors.forename: Naomi
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Hatt
authors.forename: Aparna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Nadig
authors.forename: Sally
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ozonoff
authors.forename: Sally J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Rogers
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D003071:Cognition; D032882:Comprehension; D003463:Cues; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D033182:Intention; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests