Letter to the EditorCase report: Selective deficit in the production of intransitive gestures in an individual with autism
Section snippets
Case report
JK (11 year old male) was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) according to DSM-I V (American Psychiatric Association, 1994) criteria and was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. He also achieved scores out of normal range in two tasks assessing social cognitive abilities, the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) (Lord et al., 1999; pathologic score = above 10, JK score = 15) and the Social Communication Questionnaire (SCQ) (Rutter et al., 2003; pathologic score = 15 or above, JK score =
Results
JK performed above cutoff in both gesture comprehension and imitation (see Table 1). Pantomimes and transitive gestures production were also performed above cutoff. Although the TD group also showed higher scores in the production of pantomimes than intransitive gestures, JK scored well below cutoff in the production of intransitive gestures in both verbal and visual modalities, showing for the first time a dissociation between intransitive gestures (impaired) and pantomimes (well executed).
Discussion
Whereas consistent findings show an advantage in the production of intransitive gestures over pantomimes (Bartolo et al., 2003, Dumont et al., 1999, Mozaz et al., 2002, Carmo and Rumiati, 2009), JK is the first report of a selective deficit in the production of intransitive gestures differing from previous studies reporting production deficits in both pantomimes and intransitive gestures (Smith and Bryson, 2007) and in earlier studies reporting deficits of pantomime to command and in tasks
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