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Linkenauger, S. A., Lerner, M. D., Ramenzoni, V. C., & Proffitt, D. R. (2012). A Perceptual–Motor Deficit Predicts Social and Communicative
Impairments in Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorders. Autism Research, 5, 352-362.Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) have known impairments in social and motor skills. Identifying
putative underlying mechanisms of these impairments could lead to improved understanding of the etiology of core
social/communicative deficits in ASDs, and identification of novel intervention targets. The ability to perceptually
integrate one’s physical capacities with one’s environment (affordance perception) may be such a mechanism. This
ability has been theorized to be impaired in ASDs, but this question has never been directly tested. Crucially, affordance
perception has shown to be amenable to learning; thus, if it is implicated in deficits in ASDs, it may be a valuable
unexplored intervention target. The present study compared affordance perception in adolescents and adults with ASDs
to typically developing (TD) controls. Two groups of individuals (adolescents and adults) with ASDs and age-matched TD
controls completed well-established action capability estimation tasks (reachability, graspability, and aperture passability).
Their caregivers completed a measure of their lifetime social/communicative deficits. Compared with controls,
individuals with ASDs showed unprecedented gross impairments in relating information about their bodies’ action
capabilities to visual information specifying the environment. The magnitude of these deficits strongly predicted the
magnitude of social/communicative impairments in individuals with ASDs. Thus, social/communicative impairments in
ASDs may derive, at least in part, from deficits in basic perceptual–motor processes (e.g. action capability estimation).
Such deficits may impair the ability to maintain and calibrate the relationship between oneself and one’s social and
physical environments, and present fruitful, novel, and unexplored target for intervention.
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