r/science 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/
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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?

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u/Stephen_Hero_Winter Jan 30 '25

The abstract says that kids with ASD performed worse at imitation, while ADHD and neurotypicals performed equally well.

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '25

I cannot square dance for the life of me. Now i am diagnosed.

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u/Special-Garlic1203 Jan 30 '25

I am diagnosed with ADHD and am suddenly uncomfortably aware of the numerous times I was completely incapable of mirroring a group led physical activity with a leader at the front. 

I know I have solid spacial reasoning. Like in tests where they ask you what a shape would look like at a different angle, I can do those. 

But put a human being in front of me saying "do what I do" and my brain short circuits. 

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '25

My wife has adhd and she is a mimic.

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u/Mama_Skip Jan 30 '25 edited Jan 30 '25

Yeah I have add and mirror people too often. I still suck at dancing tho but idk if that's because I can't mirror dance moves or because I can't perform the dance moves.

I mean at a certain extent how do we know this isn't also misdiagnosing?

Edit: they've controlled for that apparently, but I'm still unsure what category I'm fitting in. Probably ADD as that's what I'm diagnosed but I've always wondered if I wasn't autistic instead

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u/FleetStreetsDarkHole Jan 30 '25

Would you say you struggle to mirror the dances b\c you don't know when and how to perform the move? Or b\c when you perform the move it doesn't execute in the way you planned to?

For example I can recognize patterns in music. But if you asked me to remember the whole song I would largely not follow without being able to push all the patterns together, and still there would be gaps.

I cannot play rhythm games. I can follow the music fine. But when I execute a move I'm not focusing on the music. I'm taking my tells from something else, and since those tend to rely on the rhythm in a rhythm game I can be easily flustered by changes in patterns.

Similarly I can follow a dance, but if asked to follow along myself I just can't. The two activities just don't naturally come together for me.

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u/Special-Garlic1203 Jan 30 '25 edited Jan 30 '25

They used kids who have already been diagnosis using traditional methods and tested the accuracy of the system to correctly divide the kids into the proper group.