Emily C. Skaletski, Sailery Cortes Cardona, Brittany G. Travers
{"title":"The relation between specific motor skills and daily living skills in autistic children and adolescents","authors":"Emily C. Skaletski, Sailery Cortes Cardona, Brittany G. Travers","doi":"10.3389/fnint.2024.1334241","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Motor skill difficulties are common in autistic children and are related to daily living skills (DLS). However, it remains unclear which specific motor tasks are most likely to impact overall DLS. This study sought to fill this gap.In 90 autistic children and adolescents (ages 6–17 years), we found that fine/manual motor tasks, like drawing or folding, demonstrated significant medium-sized relations with DLS, even after accounting for IQ and sensory features, whereas tasks in the areas of bilateral coordination, upper-limb coordination, and balance only related to DLS (small effect sizes) prior to accounting for IQ and sensory features. When looking at an overall balance score, we found that IQ significantly interacted on the relation between overall balance and DLS.These results further demonstrate the particular importance of fine/manual motor skills for DLS in autistic youth, even when accounting for IQ and sensory features. Indeed, accounting for sensory features strengthened the relations between fine/manual motor skills and DLS. Our findings provide evidence of the impact of cognitive factors on the relation between balance and DLS, indicating that it may be that autistic individuals with lower IQs experience relations between balance and DLS that are different than their peers with higher IQs. Our findings support the benefit of considering individual motor skills rather than domain-level information when assessing ways to promote DLS in autistic youth. The results further shed light on the importance of fine motor skills, as well as the unique relationship of balance and DLS in autistic individuals with lower IQs.","PeriodicalId":56016,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.6000,"publicationDate":"2024-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fnint.2024.1334241","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Motor skill difficulties are common in autistic children and are related to daily living skills (DLS). However, it remains unclear which specific motor tasks are most likely to impact overall DLS. This study sought to fill this gap.In 90 autistic children and adolescents (ages 6–17 years), we found that fine/manual motor tasks, like drawing or folding, demonstrated significant medium-sized relations with DLS, even after accounting for IQ and sensory features, whereas tasks in the areas of bilateral coordination, upper-limb coordination, and balance only related to DLS (small effect sizes) prior to accounting for IQ and sensory features. When looking at an overall balance score, we found that IQ significantly interacted on the relation between overall balance and DLS.These results further demonstrate the particular importance of fine/manual motor skills for DLS in autistic youth, even when accounting for IQ and sensory features. Indeed, accounting for sensory features strengthened the relations between fine/manual motor skills and DLS. Our findings provide evidence of the impact of cognitive factors on the relation between balance and DLS, indicating that it may be that autistic individuals with lower IQs experience relations between balance and DLS that are different than their peers with higher IQs. Our findings support the benefit of considering individual motor skills rather than domain-level information when assessing ways to promote DLS in autistic youth. The results further shed light on the importance of fine motor skills, as well as the unique relationship of balance and DLS in autistic individuals with lower IQs.
期刊介绍:
Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience publishes rigorously peer-reviewed research that synthesizes multiple facets of brain structure and function, to better understand how multiple diverse functions are integrated to produce complex behaviors. Led by an outstanding Editorial Board of international experts, this multidisciplinary open-access journal is at the forefront of disseminating and communicating scientific knowledge and impactful discoveries to researchers, academics, clinicians and the public worldwide.
Our goal is to publish research related to furthering the understanding of the integrative mechanisms underlying brain functioning across one or more interacting levels of neural organization. In most real life experiences, sensory inputs from several modalities converge and interact in a manner that influences perception and actions generating purposeful and social behaviors. The journal is therefore focused on the primary questions of how multiple sensory, cognitive and emotional processes merge to produce coordinated complex behavior. It is questions such as this that cannot be answered at a single level – an ion channel, a neuron or a synapse – that we wish to focus on. In Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience we welcome in vitro or in vivo investigations across the molecular, cellular, and systems and behavioral level. Research in any species and at any stage of development and aging that are focused at understanding integration mechanisms underlying emergent properties of the brain and behavior are welcome.