Motor deficits of those with autism found to continue in teenage years

GHN News - While
some people consider autism spectrum disorder principally having
deficits in language, research reveals problems in motor areas as well,
including handwriting, that continue through the teenage years.

Evaluations of

teens with autism spectrum disorder was done through the use of the
Minnesota Handwriting Assessment Test using a scrambled words test such
as “the brown jumped lazy fox quick dogs over.”  Participants in the
study were then asked to copy the sentence using their best handwriting,
which was then scored on the basis of legibility, form, alignment, size
and spacing.  Research results showed teens with autism had motor skill
impairments that were statistically significant in comparison with
those without autism.

This
matched prediction of their performance on perceptual reasoning
scores.  The results are presently in the November edition of the
Journal of Neurology.

“That
reasoning skills can predict handwriting performance suggests a
possible strategy by which adolescents with autism could learn and
utilize compensatory strategies to overcome motor impairments,” said
study author Amy Bastian, PhD, of the Kennedy Krieger Institute and
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, MD.

“While
teenagers with autism are more likely to have handwriting problems,
there are several techniques available to improve handwriting quality,
such as adjusting pencil grip, stabilizing the writing hand with the
opposite hand or forming letters more slowly. These therapies could help
teens with autism to progress academically and develop socially,” said
Bastian.

Autism
Speaks Pre-Doctoral Fellowship and the

National Institutes of Health supported the present study.