Mimicry deficits in autism are not just storm effects

Abstract

Imitative behavior is known to be affected in Autism Spectrum Conditions. This issue has been addressed with a wide range of tasks and from many different perspectives. Here we use a version of Hamilton, Brindley, and Frith's (2007) bar-task in a sample of individuals with ASC and matched controls, to assess spontaneous imitation of goal-oriented actions. Contrary to previous studies which relied on ambiguous instructions to explore the spontaneous tendency to copy inefficient action patterns (Jiménez, Lorda, & Méndez, 2014), we used explicit instructions centered on the material outcome, in order to reduce the social motivation to overimitate. Consistently with previous findings, results showed that individuals with ASC and their matched counterparts were equally guided by action planning, but that the former exhibit a smaller tendency to mimic the less functional actions displayed by the model. These results are discussed as showing that these mimicry deficits cannot be accounted exclusively in terms of STORM (i.e., Social, Top-down Response Modulation) effects.