Importance: Finding strategies to enhance imitation skills in people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is of major clinical relevance. Objective: To evaluate whether contact with dogs may be a useful approach to elicit spontaneous imitation in people with ASD. Design: Participants completed a spontaneous imitation task under three experimental conditions: after a free-play interaction with a live dog, after a free-play interaction with a robotic dog, and after a waiting period that involved no stimuli. Participants: Ten children and 15 adults diagnosed with severe ASD. Outcomes and Measures: Imitation ratio, imitation accuracy, and indicators of social motivation. Results: Children appeared more motivated and engaged more frequently in spontaneous imitation in the live dog condition than in the other conditions. No differences between conditions were found for adults for imitation or social motivation. However, correlations suggested a possible trend for adults in time spent engaging with the live dog before testing and in increased imitation frequency. Conclusions and Relevance: The results are preliminary and do not indicate the utility of integrating (live) dogs into interventions aimed at promoting social motivation and enhancing imitation skills in people with ASD. However, they suggest that doing so holds promise. Larger scale studies are now needed. What This Article Adds: This research calls for occupational therapy practitioners’ attention to the potential benefits that may derive from using dogs to promote spontaneous imitation, and increase imitation performance, in people with ASD, particularly children.

OBJECTIVE. We compared performance level and muscle activity patterns during shape copying and tracing in two positions, while sitting at a desk and while standing in front of a wall, between typically developing (TD) preschool children and children with mild disabilities (MD). METHOD. Twenty-two TD children (8 boys, 14 girls; mean [M] age = 5.2 yr, standard deviation [SD] = 0.1) and 13 children with MD (9 boys, 4 girls; M age = 4.9 yr, SD = 0.5) participated in this study. RESULTS. The children performed faster and smoother movements when copying shapes on the vertical surface, with no reduction of accuracy, than on the horizontal surface. Children with MD exerted their upper trapezius while performing the short tasks on the vertical surface compared with their muscle activity on the horizontal surface. CONCLUSION. Incorporating short copying or drawing tasks on a vertical surface may increase the control of proximal muscles and ease graphomotor performance in children with MD.

OBJECTIVE. I investigated developmental and ability differences on a visual–motor task that requires inhibition of misleading information. METHOD. Children, including those with and without learning disabilities, and adults copied simple line or dot figures inside a tilted frame with instructions to make the figures straight. Two response methods were used: drawing (motor) and placement of bars or washers (motor reduced). RESULTS. All participants were influenced by the misleading frame, making figures that deviated from true vertical in both motor and motor-reduced formats. Adults were less influenced than children, and children with learning disabilities were more influenced than their peers. Production of more complex figures resulted in increased influence of the misleading frame. CONCLUSION. The ability to inhibit misleading contextual information and find an appropriate frame of reference may be an important developmental process in visual–motor skill development. Implications for assessment and task analysis are discussed.

Imitation, as a critical mechanism of play behavior, is a primary learning process in child development that has received scant attention in therapists’ work with children. The purpose of this study is to conceptualize a system of imitation for occupational therapy within the framework of play behavior, and to analyze this process by using system categories. A case is presented to show how the imitation process can be specifically analyzed and influenced. The imitation process, when applied in clinical practice, could broaden the perspective of existing clinical interventions with children.