Attentional and sensory contributions to postural sway in children with autism spectrum disorder

The assessment of static balance in children with hearing, visual and intellectual disabilities

“…However, limited studies have been done on posture assessment in a heterogynous group including children with different intellectual disability. Also, researchers have found that when balance tasks are simple, for example, standing on two feet with eyes open on a firm surface, there is little difference between individuals with and without disability, while increase of task difficulty (e.g., standing with eyes closed) also tend to increase postural instability when compared with typically developing peers (Graham et al, 2015;Stins, Emck, de Vries, Doop, & Beek, 2015). Several studies of postural control in children with visual impairment (VI) found that degree of vision loss presented insufficient relationship with the ability to maintain static balance (Houwen, Visscher, Lemmink, & Hartman, 2008;Juodžbalienė & Muckus, 2006).…”

Visual feedback increases postural stability in children with autism spectrum disorder

“…Similarly, Molloy et al (2003) found that when their vision was occluded, children with ASD had significantly more difficulties in maintaining balance than controls, whether or not somatosensory input was also modified, which suggests an overreliance on visual cues. Two recent studies have further confirmed this visual dependency by showing that children with ASD show more postural sway than controls when their eyes are closed (Stins, Emck, de Vries, Doop, & Beek, 2015) or while performing a visual searching task as compared to sway during an auditory digit span task (Memari, Ghanouni, Shayestehfar, Ziaee, & Moshayedi, 2014). Minshew et al (2004) compared how individuals with ASD (children and adults) and controls compensate for disrupted visual, vestibular or somatosensory inputs and found the relative importance of the latter to be the greatest.…”

Emotions in action: The relationship between motor function and social cognition across multiple clinical populations

“…Signs of hypokinesis have led some researchers to draw similarites between ASD and PD (Damasio and Maurer, 1978). More recent studies investigating movement in ASD have noted postural instability (Chen and Tsai, 2015;Doumas et al, 2015;Fournier et al, 2010Fournier et al, , 2014Graham et al, 2014;Greffou et al, 2011;Kohen-Raz et al, 1992;Minshew et al, 2004;Molloy et al, 2003;Morris et al, 2015;Stins et al, 2015), atypical gait characterised by an increased step width and reduced velocity (Kindregan et al, 2015), increased time to initiate and execute manual aiming movements (Glazebrook et al, 2006(Glazebrook et al, , 2007, longer movement times for reach-to-grasp actions (Yang et al, 2014), increased jerkiness of arm movements Edey et al, 2016), and reduced legibility of handwriting and letter formation (Kushki et al, 2011). Though many studies have documented movement atypicalities in ASD, much remains to be known about the origin of such atypicalities.…”

“…Postural instability (Chen and Tsai, 2015;Doumas et al, 2015;Fournier et al, 2010;Graham et al, 2014;Morris et al, 2015;Stins et al, 2015), plus atypical gait characterised by increased step width and reduced velocity (Kindregan et al, 2015) Hyperkinesis Dyskinesia, tremor, stereotypical movements e.g. punding (medication related) and perseveration (Stoffers et al, 2001).…”