中華心理衛生協會

The purpose of this study was to compare the immediate and the deferred imitation abilities between children with autism (mean CA=40.67months, mean MA=25.25 months) and CA and MA matched children with developmental delay. Modified from Rogers, et al. (2003) and Stone, et al. (1997), four tasks were used for evaluating the immediate imitation abilities: objects employ meaningful action, objects employ nonmeaningful action, manual movement and oral-facial movement. For evaluating deferred imitation ability, three materials used by Meltzoff(1988a, 1988b) were adopted in the current study. In this study, the ”deferred imitation” was tested 10 minutes after the presentation of the testing materials. The result revealed that children with autism were found to be significantly impaired in imitation of nonmeaningful action on objects, but the others are similar to the children with developmental delay. The findings were inconsistent with the former studies. The similarities and differences between this study and other studies are discussed. Further study needs to recruit more subjects, to modify and add some items, and to control the training effect and the severity of autistic symptoms.