Behavioral,Cognitive, and Motor Preparation Deficits in a Visual Cued Spatial Attention Task in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abnormalities in motor skills have been regarded as part of the symptomatology characterizing autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It has been estimated that 80 % of subjects with autism display “motor dyspraxia” or clumsiness that are not readily identified in a routine neurological examination. In this study we used behavioral measures, event-related potentials (ERP), and lateralized readiness potential (LRP) to study cognitive and motor preparation deficits contributing to the dyspraxia of autism. A modified Posner cueing task was used to analyze motor preparation abnormalities in children with autism and in typically developing children (N = 30/per group). In this task, subjects engage in preparing motor response based on a visual cue, and then execute a motor movement based on the subsequent imperative stimulus. The experimental conditions, such as the validity of the cue and the spatial location of the target stimuli were manipulated to influence motor response selection, preparation, and execution. Reaction time and accuracy benefited from validly cued targets in both groups, while main effects of target spatial position were more obvious in the autism group. The main ERP findings were prolonged and more negative early frontal potentials in the ASD in incongruent trials in both types of spatial location. The LRP amplitude was larger in incongruent trials and had stronger effect in the children with ASD. These effects were better expressed at the earlier stages of LRP, specifically those related to response selection, and showed difficulties at the cognitive phase of stimulus processing rather that at the motor execution stage. The LRP measures at different stages reflect the chronology of cognitive aspects of movement preparation and are sensitive to manipulations of cue correctness, thus representing very useful biomarker in autism dyspraxia research. Future studies may use more advance and diverse manipulations of movement preparation demands in testing more refined specifics of dyspraxia symptoms to investigate functional connectivity abnormalities underlying motor skills deficits in autism.