r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Jan 30 '25

Neuroscience 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.

https://newatlas.com/adhd-autism/autism-motion-detection-diagnosis/
7.0k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

476 comments sorted by

View all comments

537

u/K3u21 Jan 30 '25

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

268

u/Nauin Jan 30 '25

A lot of autistic people have what's called proprioceptive dysfunction. Which means we don't have a strong sense of awareness for how our bodies are positioned and move compared to those who don't have this issue. It's one of the many factors lending a hand in poor motor function and coordination which is also common with autism.

Having the lived experience of these disorders I went from skeptical to, "ohhhh, yep that could work," as soon as I read "copy dance moves," in the headline.

3

u/jojo_the_mofo Jan 30 '25

That makes sense as someone on the spectrum. I've always sucked at those things such as martial arts when having to copy other people doing things with their bodies, copying dance moves, piano, guitar, anything to where I need to know where my body is in space.

If you've seen Ian Curtis dancing, yeah, that's me, not the most elegant. Though I do love to watch people on youtube dance who are good at it; it's fascinating seeing people do something I'm not good at.