A low-cost tool accurately distinguishes neurotypical children from children with autism just by watching them copy the dance moves of an on-screen avatar for a minute. It can even tell autism from ADHD, conditions that commonly overlap.

[u/mvea]

https://newatlas.com/adhd-autism/autism-motion-detection-diagnosis/

[u/K3u21]

New terms to me: Would that mean better imitation puts them in the ADHD and ASD diagnosis, or would worse imitation be the diagnosis?

[u/hashford → u/K3u21]

The article explains.

[u/AfricanUmlunlgu → u/hashford]

where exactly?

[u/Funky_Smurf → u/AfricanUmlunlgu]

It doesn't say it explicitly but is clear from a few parts of the article with some reading comprehension/logical reasoning

Compared to neurotypical children, studies have shown that children with ASD struggle particularly with tasks like ball catching and motor imitation that require efficient visual-motor integration.

...

Because it’s crucial for learning both social and motor skills, it follows that imitation could be a good biomarker for ASD. So, based on this and the aforementioned studies, the researchers developed the Computerized Assessment of Motor Imitation, or CAMI, to detect ASD by focusing on differences in motor imitation.

...

Over two one-minute trials, the children were asked to stand and copy the whole-body, dance-like movements of a video avatar while two Kinect Xbox cameras recorded them. For each trial, CAMI calculated an imitation score that varied between zero (no imitation at all) and one (perfect imitation, such as that performed by a well-trained researcher).

So

1) children with ASD struggle with motor imitation

2) researchers created a test to assess motor imitation

3) that test is this dance video

4) researchers are able to identify 80% of participants with ASD

So we can conclude that children with ASD perform lower on the dance test