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Motion and Form Coherence Detection in Autistic Spectrum Disorder: Relationship to Motor Control and 2:4 Digit Ratio

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Children with autistic spectrum disorder and controls performed tasks of coherent motion and form detection, and motor control. Additionally, the ratio of the 2nd and 4th digits of these children, which is thought to be an indicator of foetal testosterone, was measured. Children in the experimental group were impaired at tasks of motor control, and had lower 2D:4D than controls. There were no group differences in motion or form detection. However a sub-group of children with autism were selectively impaired at motion detection. There were significant relationships between motion coherence detection and motor control in both groups of children, and also between motion detection, fine motor control and 2D:4D in the group of children with autistic spectrum disorder.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the children and schools who took part in this study for their time, effort and cooperation, John Manning for his discussion of 2D:4D measurement, and Marcin Szczerbinski for his discussion of statistical analysis. This research was supported by an ESRC studentship (R42200034283) and a UCL graduate school scholarship awarded to Elizabeth Milne, and partly funded by a Medical Research Council grant (G9617036) awarded to Uta Frith, and a Marie Curie fellowship of the European Community programme Quality of Life (QLGI-CT 1999-51305) awarded to Franck Ramus.

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Correspondence to Elizabeth Milne.

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Milne, E., White, S., Campbell, R. et al. Motion and Form Coherence Detection in Autistic Spectrum Disorder: Relationship to Motor Control and 2:4 Digit Ratio. J Autism Dev Disord 36, 225–237 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-005-0052-3

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