Joint attention - the ability to coordinate attention with a social partner - is critical for social communication, learning and the regulation of interpersonal relationships. Infants and young children with autism demonstrate impairments in both initiating and responding to joint attention bids in naturalistic settings. However, little is known about joint attention abilities in adults with autism. Here, we tested 17 autistic adults and 17 age- and nonverbal intelligence quotient-matched controls using an interactive eye-tracking paradigm in which participants initiated and responded to joint attention bids with an on-screen avatar. Compared to control participants, autistic adults completed fewer trials successfully. They were also slower to respond to joint attention bids in the first block of testing but performed as well as controls in the second block. There were no group differences in responding to spatial cues on a non-social task with similar attention and oculomotor demands. These experimental results were mirrored in the subjective reports given by participants, with some commenting that they initially found it challenging to communicate using eye gaze, but were able to develop strategies that allowed them to achieve joint attention. Our study indicates that for many autistic individuals, subtle difficulties using eye-gaze information persist well into adulthood.

In this study, the relationship between gesture recognition and imitation was explored. Nineteen individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) were compared to a control group of 23 typically developing children on their ability to imitate and recognize three gesture types (transitive, intransitive, and pantomimes). The ASD group performed more poorly than controls on all tasks of recognition and imitation. Higher performance on tests of working memory was associated with increased odds of successful imitation in both groups. Group differences remained even when working memory was statistically controlled for. An association was revealed in the ASD group between pantomime recognition and imitation but a similar association was not identified for intransitive gestures suggesting that recognition alone is not sufficient for imitation success.

Although we hypothesized that technology use would be less amongst non-consulters and unsuccessful hearing aid owners, our findings did not support this prediction. Technology use did not vary by group membership once the covariates of age, gender, and living arrangements were accounted for.

Since the first studies on limb apraxia carried out by Hugo Liepmann more than a century ago, research interests focused on the way humans process manual gestures by assessing gesture production after patients suffered neurologic deficits. Recent reviews centered their attention on deficits in gesture imitation or processing object-related gestures, namely pantomimes and transitive gestures, thereby neglecting communicative/intransitive gestures. This review will attempt to reconcile limb apraxia in its entirety. To this end, the existing cognitive models of praxis processing that have been designed to account for the complexity of this disorder will be taken into account, with an attempt to integrate in these models the latest findings in the studies of limb apraxia, in particular on meaningful gestures. Finally, this overview questions the very nature of limb apraxia when other cognitive deficits are observed.