| Autism Spectrum Disorder(ASD)is a widespread developmental disorder characterized by impaired social communication,narrow interests and stereotyped behavior.Imitative disorder is one of the extensive developmental disorders in children with autism.The EP-M model is a typical theory to explain imitative abnormalities in patients with ASD.Traditional imitation studies are not enough to reflect the essence of social interaction during imitation in real situations.The interpersonal neural synchronization index represents the correlation or coherence of interbrain signals and can measure the interaction between individuals.Therefore,this study aims to further expand and revise the EP-M model by exploring the characteristics and interpersonal neural mechanisms of action imitation in preschool children with autism spectrum disorders through four series of studies.In study 1,the activation likelihood method meta-analysis based on functional magnetic resonance imaging(f MRI)is intended to explore the neural mechanism of dynamic motion imitation in patients with autism spectrum disorders,and to initially select areas of interest for subsequent empirical research.The results showed that the temporal region was activated in both typical developing(TD)individuals and those with ASD.The frontal and parietal regions were activated by simulated dynamic movements observed in normally developing individuals and patients with autism spectrum disorders.Therefore,the brain regions of interest can be selected to the temporal region,parietal region and frontal region in subsequent studies.In study 2,imitation movement materials in subsequent studies were selected,including 10 items each of meaningful/meaningless gesture movements,meaningful/meaningless object using movements,meaningful/meaningless mouth and face movements,and meaningless coarse body movements.In this study,the score of children’s understanding of the meaning of movements,the frequency of parents’ comments on children’s movements were used as the meaning score,and the accuracy of children’s imitation of movements and the difficulty of parents’ comments on children’s execution of movements were used as the difficulty score.The results showed that the meaning of meaningful action was higher than that of meaningless action.There is a significant difference in difficulty between high difficulty movements,medium difficulty movements and low difficulty movements.The results show that the selected movement is scientifically effective.Study 3 aims to explore the characteristics and mechanism of interpersonal neural synchronization of pre-school children with autism imitating gestures of different meanings.The study was conducted using 2(individual type: autistic children vs.typically developing children)×2(action purposefulness: meaningful motor imitation vs.meaningless motor imitation).The dependent variables were the children’s interpersonal neural synchronization,interpersonal behavior synchronization and imitative behavior performance.The results showed that both meaningless gestures and meaningful gestures were less accurate and more synchronized in ASD children than those of TD children.Interbrain synchronization in the right inferior parietal lobule was greater in TD children than in children with ASD when miming meaningless gestures.People with autism do not follow a demonstrator when mimicking meaningless gestures,as children without autism do.In study 4,the purpose of this study was to explore the characteristics and mechanism of interpersonal neural synchronization in the imitation of meaningless movements in different parts of preschool children with autism,and to explore the predictive effects of shared attention,theory of mind,and coordination of movements on the characteristics of interbrain neural synchronization in children’s imitation.The study was conducted using 2(individual type: autistic children vs.typically developing children)× 4(action type: gesture movements vs.object using movements vs.mouth and face movements vs.coarse body movements).The dependent variables were interpersonal neural synchronization and imitative behavior performance when children synchronously imitated the subjects’ movements.The results showed that the accuracy of imitation and the interbrain synchronization of the right inferior parietal lobule in children with ASD were significantly lower than those in children with TD,regardless of the imitation of gesture movements,object using movements,mouth and face movements,and coarse body movements.While TD children follow the model as they mimic all kinds of meaningless actions,autistic people do not.When mimicking all meaningless movements,theory of mind and coordination of movements predicted the interbrain neural synchronization in TD children negatively and positively,respectively.In conclusion,this study shows that the interbrain synchronization caused by the presumed purpose of gestures in TD children and models is greater than that in ASD children and models when imitating meaningless gestures,and the purpose understanding ability and action execution ability can only predict the interbrain synchronization in TD children when imitating various types of meaningless gestures.It is proved that EP＿M model has limited explanatory power in the field of simulated interpersonal neural synchronization. |
