Imitation in Autism in Relation to Social Development : A Case Study of a Boy with Autistic Spectrum Disorder in Group-Play Psychotherapy Sessions

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Studies have found imitation deficit to be autistic-specific and have raised many hypotheses for the underlying mechanism. The recently proposed 'social-communicative function' theory emphasizes the role of imitation for emotion sharing and intentional social learning in terms of social development. In this paper, we have reviewed the prior studies briefly and investigated the relevance of the 'social-communicative function' theory through clinical observations of a boy on the autistic spectrum (aged 9 years 9 months). In order to examine the relationship between the changes in imitation behaviours and those in social-communicative behaviours, his behavioral records through 7 group-play sessions under loosely structured modeling conditions were scored and analyzed. The results demonstrated that both the boy's positive social-communicative behaviours, and his imitative behaviours increased throughout the sessions. Further, the nature of his social behaviours changed as his imitation behaviours increased. These behavioral findings suggested the possibility that imitation may play a role in expanding one's social-communicative repertoire. Future directions for imitation studies are then discussed.
九州大学の論文