Schematic and realistic biological motion identification in children with high-functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder

• First study to compare performance on schematic and point-light biological motion identification.
• Children with HF-ASD performed with similar accuracy as the TD comparison group.
• Both groups performed better on animate, compared to inanimate motion trials.
• Performance across point-light and schematic biological motion tasks was correlated only in the HF-ASD group.
• Performance of children with HF-ASD was correlated with scores on a screening measure for ASD.

Research investigating biological motion perception in children with ASD has revealed conflicting findings concerning whether impairments in biological motion perception exist. The current study investigated how children with high-functioning ASD (HF-ASD) performed on two tasks of biological motion identification: a novel schematic motion identification task and a point-light biological motion identification task. Twenty-two HF-ASD children were matched with 21 TD children on gender, non-verbal mental, and chronological, age (M years = 6.72). On both tasks, HF-ASD children performed with similar accuracy as TD children. Across groups, children performed better on animate than on inanimate trials of both tasks. These findings suggest that identification of both realistic and schematic biological motion is unimpaired in children with HF-ASD.