Interpersonal Coordination Deficits in Joint Action in Pre-school Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: Evidence...

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Developmental Psychology
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by social interaction and communication challenges.
• Interpersonal coordination, crucial for joint actions, is often impaired in individuals with ASD, though empirical evidence remains debated.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate interpersonal coordination deficits in children with ASD during cooperative and competitive tasks.
• To utilize functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning to examine neural synchrony during dyadic interactions.

Main Methods:

• 42 children (21 with ASD, 21 without) performed dyadic block-building tasks under cooperative and competitive intentions.
• fNIRS hyperscanning recorded brain activation and interpersonal neural synchronization (INS).
• Machine learning algorithms (Random Forest, AdaBoost, XGBoost) analyzed INS for group discrimination.

Main Results:

• Children with ASD exhibited lower behavioral accuracy and synchrony in both cooperative and competitive tasks.
• Reduced INS was observed in ASD children within specific brain regions (rTPJ-rIFG, rTPJ-rIPL, bilateral TPJ) during cooperation.
• Lower activation in the right inferior parietal lobule (rIPL) was noted in ASD children during competition.

Conclusions:

• The study confirms interpersonal coordination deficits in children with ASD during joint actions, encompassing both cooperative and competitive contexts.
• Interpersonal neural synchronization (INS) serves as a valid neural indicator of these deficits.
• Machine learning offers a promising approach for analyzing and validating INS in ASD research.