Seeing motion of controlled object improves grip timing in adults with autism spectrum condition: evidence for use of inverse dynamics in motor control

Previous studies (Haswell et al. in Nat Neurosci 12:970-972, 2009; Marko et al. in Brain J Neurol 138:784-797, 2015) reported that people with autism rely less on vision for learning to reach in a force field. This suggested a possibility that they have difficulties in extracting force information from visual motion signals, a process called inverse dynamics computation. Our recent study (Takamuku et al. in J Int Soc Autism Res 11:1062-1075, 2018) examined the ability of inverse computation with two perceptual tasks and found similar performances in typical and autistic adults. However, this tested the computation only in the context of sensory perception while it was possible that the suspected disability is specific to the motor domain. Here, in order to address the concern, we tested the use of inverse dynamics computation in the context of motor control by measuring changes in grip timing caused by seeing/not seeing a controlled object. The motion of the object was informative of its inertial force and typical participants improved their grip timing based on the visual feedback. Our interest was on whether the autism participants show the same improvement. While some autism participants showed atypical hand slowing when seeing the controlled object, we found no evidence of abnormalities in the inverse computation in our grip timing task or in a replication of the perceptual task. This suggests that the ability of inverse dynamics computation is preserved not only for sensory perception but also for motor control in adults with autism.

Automated summary

Previous studies found that individuals with autism rely less on vision for reaching in a force field, suggesting difficulties in extracting force information from visual motion signals. A recent study showed that autistic adults perform similarly to typical adults in inverse computation in perceptual tasks, indicating preserved ability in sensory perception and motor control. Through testing the use of inverse dynamics computation in a motor control context, it was found that autistic adults also exhibit preserved ability in this aspect.