Sensorimotor Development Flashcards
Importance of sensorimotor skills adapted from
Piaget developmental stages
Sensorimotor
0-2 years
The infant explores the world through direct sensory and motor contact
Object permanence and separation anxiety develop during this stage
Preoperational
2-6 years
The child uses symbols (words and images) to represent objects but does not reason logically.
This child also has the ability to pretend
During this stage, the child is egocentric
Concrete operational
6-12 years
The child can think logically about concrete objects and can thus age and subtract
The child also understands conversation
Formal operational
12 years - adult
The adolescent can reason abstractly and thinks in hypothetical terms
What are some sensorimotor skills
- Walking
- ‘Clumsiness’
- Hand/eye coordination
- Reading
- Writing
- Coordinating eye contact with speech and gesture during a conversation
The range of skills need
Intact sensorimotor processing
Gowen and Hamilton 2013
How does it work?
Vision and Proprioception = 1) Sensory systems = 2) State estimation = (current state) 3) Inverse Model (planning / control) - desired state of the world (motor control) = 4) Forward model (predictor) this links to 2) state estimation. 3 also leads to 5) Motor execution (muscle activity) - body interacting with the world
Gowen and Hamilton 2013
What can go wrong
Number 1 and Number 3 can go wrong
1) Sensory systems
3) Inverse Model (planning/control) (desired state of the world)
Disorders of sensorimotor development
Autism spectrum disorder
Developmental co-ordination disorder (DCD) / Dyspraxia
Both conditions encompass sensory and motor difficulties
Sensorimotor skills associated with
Autism and autistic skills
Help with communication and empathy
Autism spectrum disorder
Pronounced difficulties in
–Communication –Socialisation –Narrow Circumscribed interests –Repetitive Behaviours –Sensory hypersensitivity
Developmental Co-ordination Disorder (DCD) / Dyspraxia
Pronounced difficulties in:
–Selection, timing and spatial organization of purposeful movement and coordination
–Social anxiety, social and communication skills
Cassidy, S., Hannant, P., Tavassoli, T., Allison, C., Smith, P., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2016).
DCD/Dyspraxia, autism and autistic traits
Subscale
Social skill
Attention to switching
Attention to detail
Communication
Imagination
•Adults with autism significantly more likely to have DCD/dyspraxia (6.9%) than the gen pop (0.8%)
•Adults with DCD/dyspraxia have significantly higher autistic traits and lower empathy than controls
People with autism
Have an over load of sensations
Piek and Dyck 2004
DCD/Dyspraxia + autism
Much overlap between these conditions
Cummins et al. 2005
DCD/Dyspraxia + autism
Both associated with difficulties in social and communication skills, and empathy into adulthood
People with autism have difficulty in
Raising own head Unusual gait Sitting up Unusual way of formal words Unusual motor things then later on social things
Hannant et al. 2016
DCD/Dyspraxia + autism
Autism must be assessed in those with DCD and vice versa
Understanding sensorimotor difficulties
- Start with looking at sensory and motor difficulties separately
- Then bring them together – intrinsically related
- Explore their impact on development
- Can these difficulties explain the development and maintenance of autism?
Motor difficulties in autism
Kanner and Asperger
First clinical reports of general “clumsiness”
Unusual gait included in autism diagnostic assessment (ADI-R)
Green et al. 2009
Motor difficulties in autism
80% of people with autism have definite motor difficulties, and an additional 10% are borderline
Flanagan et al. 2012
Motor difficulties in autism
Motor differences are present from early infancy
Impact of motor difficulties
Motor difficulties associated with difficulties in:
Mostofsky et al. 2006
Imitation
Impact of motor difficulties
Motor difficulties associated with difficulties in:
Page and Boucher, 1998
Speech sound production
Impact of motor difficulties
Motor difficulties associated with difficulties in:
Cummins et al. 2005
Emotion recognition
Impact of motor difficulties
Motor difficulties associated with difficulties in:
Batt et al. 2011
Anxiety in response to social interaction
Many of the studies are not with
Autistic people but with the general population
Motor skills are important for
Social development
Sensory difficulties in autism are now a part of
- Now part of current diagnostic criteria for autism in DSM-V
- Early clinical reports described “sensory intrusions” (Kanner and Asperger)
Caminha and Lampreia, 2012; Tomcheck and Dunn, 2007
Sensory difficulties in autism
High prevalence in autism (65% - 95%)
Blanche et al. 2012
Sensory difficulties in autism
Proprioceptive impairment (determining where body is in space)
Contradictory evidence because
Intact lots of sensation processing but difficulty with movement processing
Appears contradictory – intact form but deficits in motion
Baron-Cohen et al.
Sensory difficulties in autism
Increased rates of synaesthesia (where one sensory modality triggers another)
Sensory difficulties in autism
Mottron et al. 2006
Evidence of superior visual processing of details
Sensory difficulties(?) in autism Koldewyn et al. 2011
Difficulties processing motion
People with autism have a fondness of
Routine
Impact of sensory difficulties
Matsushima and Kato, 2013; Reynolds et al. 2011
Sensory reactivity associated with difficulties in social and communication skills
Impact of sensory difficulties
Tavissoli et al. 2013; 2014
Autistic traits associated with sensory reactivity
Sensory processing important for
Social development
Sensory difficulties a core feature of autism and
associated with RRBs and anxiety
Repetitive behaviours (RRBs) also a core feature =
insistence on sameness and repetitive motor movements
What time is it?”
anecdotally, these behaviours associated with anxiety in autism
–“Intolerance of uncertainty”
Wigham, S., Rodgers, J., South, M., McConachie, H., & Freeston, M. (2015). The interplay between sensory processing abnormalities, intolerance of uncertainty, anxiety and restricted and repetitive behaviours in autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 45(4), 943-952.
Autism
Sensory and motor difficulties prevalent in autism, and associated with social and
communication skills
Landa and Garrett-Mayer, 2006
Associated with increased likelihood of autism diagnosis at 3 years
Sensory and motor difficulties in autism appear to be related, and impact on
anxiety and intolerance of uncertainty
Sensory and motor abilities are
- intrinsically connected
* Should explore how they work together in autism
•Children with autism have marked
sensory and motor difficulties
compared to those …
Without autism
•Sensorimotor skills, such as catching a
ball, most strongly associated with a
number of autism symptoms across measures in both groups
Sensorimotor skills (as opposed to sensory or motor alone) more strongly predict
social and communication skills in those with and without autism
Sensorimotor integration in autism
Eye movements:
Schmitt et al. 2013
–less accurate when moving eyes to a
new target
Sensorimotor integration in autism
Eye movements:
Wilkes et al. 2015)
–Slower to initiate an eye movement
Sensorimotor integration in autism
Glazebrook et al. 2009
Difficulties coordinating hand and eye movements
Sensorimotor integration in autism
Hannant et al. 2016; Klin
Could explain delay in looking to pertinent social cues with downstream effects on social and communication ability
Eye movements
Smooth pursuit
Smooth eye movement to track a moving target
Involuntary - can’t be produced without a moving object
Sensorimotor integration in autism
Cascio, C. J., Foss-Feig, J. H., Burnette, C. P., Heacock, J. L., & Cosby, A. A. (2012).
•Rubber hand illusion
–Children with autism less susceptible than typically developing controls
–Delayed susceptibility to the illusion (6 minutes)
–Those children with less empathy less susceptible
•Reduced ability to integrate visual and tactile information
The rubber hand illusion in children with autism spectrum disorders: delayed influence of combined tactile and visual input on proprioception
Paton, B., Hohwy, J., & Enticott, P. G. (2012).
Rubber hand illusion in autism
•Adults with autism did experience the rubber hand illusion, but were less sensitive to visual-tactile discrepancies
•Less proprioceptive drift to the rubber hand than controls
rubber hand illusion reveals proprioceptive and sensorimotor differences in autism spectrum disorders
Sensorimotor integration in autism
Difficulties in incorporating visual information into motor learning in autism:
Dowd et al. 2012
presence of a visual distractor did not impact performance of children with autism like with typical controls
Sensorimotor integration in autism
Difficulties in incorporating visual information into motor learning in autism:
Gepner and Mestre, 2002
significantly less able to correct movements from visual compared to proprioceptive feedback
People with autism have too much
Excitation
Sensorimotor integration in autism
Gowen et al. 2008)
specific difficulties with motor movements which require integrating visual cues or other sensory signals
Salowitz, N. M., Eccarius, P., Karst, J., Carson, A., Schohl, K., Stevens, S., … & Scheidt, R. A. (2013)
Brief report: visuo-spatial guidance of movement during gesture imitation and mirror drawing in children with autism spectrum disorders.
Direct drawing
Mirror drawing
those with autism do not tend to incorporate
other sensory inputs, particularly visual feedback, into motor learning
have difficulty coordinating visual and motor movements
Model summary
- Suggests difficulty incorporating sensory feedback into model
- Results in impaired forward model, lacking accuracy and flexibility
Modifying the forward model
Cascio et al. 2012; Vandenbroucke et al. 2009; Glazebrook et al. 2009)
People with autism can learn new motor skills, and modify the forward model, but it takes longer
Number 4
Also appears to improve with age (e.g. adults more susceptible to rubber hand illusion)
Biological basis
Cerebellum could play a key role:
Schmitt et al. 2014
Saccadic accuracy has been connected to error-reducing function of the cerebellum
Biological basis
Cerebellum could play a key role:
Marko et al. 2015
Cerebellum volume associated with difficulties incorporating visual cues in motor learning
Biological basis
Glickstein, 1998
Cerebellum contains pathways that link sensory and motor pathways in the brain
Where Sensorimotor Integration Occurs
Purkinje Cells in Cerebellum (Sensorimotor Neurons)
GABA
Glutamate
What is GABA
Gamma aminobutyric acid
Neurotypical
Sufficient receptors for GABA
Efficient synthesis of GABA
Autism biology
Inefficient synthesis of GABA
Limited receptors for GABA
Impact of sensorimotor difficulties in autism
Difficulties with:
–accuracy, speed, and initiation of eye movements;
–coordination of eye and body movements;
–integrating visual and tactile information
–integrating visual information into motor learning, with increased reliance on proprioception
