Children with autism respond differently to spontaneous, elicited and deferred imitation.

Background: Imitation, a key vehicle for both cognitive and social development, is often regarded as more difficult for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) than for children with Down syndrome (DS) or typically developing (TD) children. The current study investigates similarities and differences in observed elicited, spontaneous and deferred imitation using both actions with objects and gestures as imitation tasks in these groups.

Methods: Imitation among 19 children with autism was compared with 20 children with DS and 23 TD children matched for mental and language age.

Early declarative memory predicts productive language: A longitudinal study of deferred imitation and communication at 9 and 16months.

Deferred imitation (DI) may be regarded as an early declarative-like memory ability shaping the infant's ability to learn about novelties and regularities of the surrounding world. In the current longitudinal study, infants were assessed at 9 and 16months. DI was assessed using five novel objects.

The relationship between deferred imitation, associative memory, and communication in 14-months-old children. Behavioral and electrophysiological indices.

The present study combines behavioral observations of memory (deferred imitation, DI, after a brief delay of 30 min and after a long delay of 2-3 weeks) and electrophysiological (event-related potentials, ERPs) measures of associative memory, as well as parental reports of non-verbal and verbal communication in sixteen 14-months-old children. Results show that for DI, the children remembered the stimulus after the brief but not after the long delay. There was a clear electrophysiological response indicating associative memory.

Associative learning measured with ERP predicts deferred imitation using a strict observation only design in 14 to 15 month old children.

Deferred imitation (DI) is an established procedure for behavioral measurement of early declarative-like memories in infancy and previous work has indicated a link between this type of memory and brain potentials in infants. The present study compared infants' memory performance in this paradigm with electrophysiological indices of associative learning. Thirty children (M = 14.