Association Between Overimitation and Adaptive Behavior in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders

Abstract

― 10 ― Overimitation is defıned as imitating not only the actions necessary to achieve the fınal goal but also actions not necessary for achieving the goal. In the present study, children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and typically developing (TD) children were given imitation tasks, and differences between the groups were examined. Also, the Social Maturity Scale (S-M scale) was administered in order to examine the relationship between overimitation and adaptive behavior. Children with autism spectrum disorders (16 boys, 4 girls; aged 6 to 9) constituted the experimental group; the control group was made up of typically developing children (8 boys, 7 girls; aged 6 to 9). Although no signifıcant difference was found in the occurrence of imitations in the usual imitation task, in the overimitation task, the number of occurrences of imitations was signifıcantly lower in the children with autism spectrum disorders than in the typically developing children. A signifıcant correlation was found between the number of overimitations and the Social Maturity Scale scores. These results suggest that the lower number of overimitations may be related to a weakness of social motivation, such as a decline in empathy toward others. It is possible that that the lower number of overimitations by children with autism spectrum disorders may make it diffıcult for them to acquire appropriate behavior, and may be an obstacle to the development of social adaptation.