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

Show parent comments

368

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.

152

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '25

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

126

u/holadiose Jan 30 '25

Interestingly, there was actually a study showing that autistic people are generally better at square dancing in particular. There's even evidence to suggest that all proficient square dancers are likely on the spectrum. Fascinating stuff, and we're talking about highly legit studies here.

0

u/retrosenescent Feb 01 '25

That makes sense once you consider sampling bias - who in their neurotypical mind would want to square dance? No one.